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1.
ABSTRACT

The mission of a community college is distinct from a research one university, where empirical research is valued over investigation of discipline-based teaching and learning. The open-access, affordable, workforce, and transfer emphasis that serves many non-traditional community college students is a rich, meaningful environment for fostering the scholarship of teaching and learning, yet despite an emphasis on best practices and student success outcomes, teaching, and learning in this environment is an underappreciated element of the faculty role. This study explores the use of action research to facilitate engagement in the scholarship of teaching and instructional innovation. The mixed-method action research design incorporated quantitative and qualitative analysis from a wide variety of data sources and triangulated findings through a variation of techniques, including ongoing researcher dialogue and ratings. Action research serves as both the method for this study and the mechanism for faculty research on classroom innovations. This was substantiated as a catalyst for cultivating ongoing inquiry and professional growth. The Innov8 program and integration of action research appears to have a long-term, substantive impact on faculty perspectives, specifically influencing faculty culture, continued educational investigation, and ultimately student learning outcomes.  相似文献   

2.
Using a mixed methods, multilevel research design, this pilot inquiry explored the relationship between college faculty professional development and the academic achievement of diverse students by coupling two separate links: (a) the effects that professional development activities have on improving teaching strategies, and (b) the effects these teaching strategies have on student learning. Data were collected from administrators, faculty, and students to discover what teaching strategies are being used and, in their view, how these strategies affect learning outcomes. Data sources included a survey, documents, interviews, and observations. The case study institution is a New Mexico community college, and the research focuses on two academic programs with 145 students enrolled. Data analyses revealed three main themes: (a) faculty development and its link to teacher effectiveness and student learning outcomes are embedded in the mission, goals, and policies of the institution; (b) faculty development is considered vital, funding is always available, and faculty participate in on- and off-campus development activities to enhance their teaching effectiveness and student learning outcomes; and (c) the institution focused on collecting and analyzing student learning outcomes data, but no data-driven means for assessing the effectiveness of faculty development activities existed.  相似文献   

3.
Eleven experienced community college faculty members were interviewed to elicit examples of how they improved student learning productivity in their online courses. The 11 faculty members represented eight different states, nine different fields or disciplines, and all were permanent or full-time faculty members at community colleges in the southern or western states. Based on a thematic analysis of the examples given, improvement in student learning occurred by (a) emphasizing seven approaches to increase student engagement, (b) using six different structuring tactics to focus student attention on learning, (c) using assessment techniques to improve learning, and (d) pursuing a personal passion for online teaching. These findings suggest that faculty can and do find ways to use different tools in different ways to improve student learning productivity in community colleges.  相似文献   

4.
Backward course design is a compelling strategy for achieving results-based, student-centered learning. The backward course-design approach is first to identify student-learning outcomes, then the means of assessing the outcomes, and lastly the classroom activities that would support the learning outcomes. With demonstrated success at improving teaching and learning at K–12 levels, this design approach is receiving increasing attention at the college level. Yet college faculty, who receive comparatively little instruction in course design, may find it challenging to enact the principles of backward course design into day-to-day lecture planning. To help address this challenge, we developed a backward design-inspired lesson planner to assist in restructuring college course periods for more active, learner-centered activities that align with course goals. We describe the planner and its application to a non-majors college biology class, and we share student and instructor perceptions of classroom structure and use of classroom time before and after implementation. Benefits of implementing the backward design planner included enhanced ability to prioritize content delivery to students, better time management in and out of the classroom, improved experience of lecture preparation, more engaged students, and more frequent feedback on student comprehension.  相似文献   

5.
Community college faculty development programs assist faculty in the development of quality curricula, using current and expanding teaching technologies. The first step in helping faculty reach their respective goals is to help them articulate their instructional needs. Eighteen faculty members participated in this study, using a personal in-depth interview as the research method. Several implications for community college faculty and administration resulted from this study including: the need to emphasize information literacy, the faculty as lecturers who want to use technology as a means of enhancing that lecture, the need for more time to accomplish their instructional ideas, the need for help to incorporate technology in the classroom themselves, and the desire for training classes that fit their time schedules and location.  相似文献   

6.
This study explored the relationships between faculty scholarly learning, faculty teaching learning, institutional support, faculty demographics, disciplinary groups, working conditions, and career outcomes such as retention, productivity, satisfaction, and career agency. We found that the stronger the scholarly learning faculty members reported, the more institutional and unit support they perceived for learning, the more satisfied they were, the less likely they were to intend to leave their institution, and the more career agency they reported. Similarly, we found that faculty members who reported more learning related to teaching reported a decreased intent to leave the institution and increased career agency. We draw implications for the development of work environments that support scholarly and teaching learning.  相似文献   

7.
Critical thinking is an important outcome of a college education. Assessment techniques that require students to demonstrate their understanding of course concepts are referred to as authentic assessment and promote the development of critical thinking. Little research exists on the types of assessment and grading practices utilized by community college instructors. This research examined the incidence and nature of various assessment practices used by community college faculty for basing the course grade. In addition, the study also examined the percentage of course grades that was based on traditional and authentic assessment and factors that may influence the use of assessment techniques. To facilitate the study, an online survey instrument was used to obtain data from faculty employed at two community colleges in California. Study results revealed that a variety of assessment practices are used by community college instructors with differences in relation to faculty status, level of academic achievement, online teaching status, and years of teaching experience. In addition, findings indicate that faculty primarily use authentic assessment in basing the course grade as compared to objective or traditional assessment—suggesting that they are using assessment techniques that promote critical thinking. A significant finding was that part-time faculty emphasize objective exams, attendance, and homework whereas full-time faculty emphasize research projects and learning journals. Findings suggest that professional development may be warranted for faculty by faculty status.  相似文献   

8.
Community colleges accommodate nearly half of all United States college students. Increased reliance upon community colleges is driven by the current economic downturn, rising costs of higher education, and changing expectations for today's workforce requiring advanced skill sets. Community colleges offer more affordable options for broader spectrums of students including traditional and nontraditional college students and dual-enrolled high school students.

Community college faculty facilitate student learning and program completion. A shortage of community college faculty will likely emerge as numerous faculty retire. Community college administrators need strategies for retaining and recruiting faculty amid increasing retirements. One effective strategy is to offer a work environment that cultivates positive work-related attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction). This study examines the ability of select human capital investments, intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, and sociodemographics to predict overall job satisfaction for full-time community college faculty. A cross-sectional predictive design was used with secondary analysis of the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04) dataset.

Logistic Regression was utilized to determine predictive ability of the independent variables on overall job satisfaction. Results indicated that faculty were more likely to be satisfied with their work if they were satisfied with their salary, benefits and workload; were satisfied with the teaching support they received from their institutions; and if they perceived that females and minorities were treated fairly by the organization. Conversely, minority faculty were less likely to be satisfied, as were faculty who indicated they would again choose a career in academe if given the choice.  相似文献   

9.
Much has been written about the characteristics of effective college teachers. However, skill sets have not yet been defined with any level of specificity. Also, instructors at community colleges have unique working conditions and challenges that influence how they teach. This paper illustrates the use of three studies conducted to build and validate a framework for defining the competencies of effective community college faculty. The project's culmination was a set of skills used to redesign one university's master's in education (MAEd) program in two-year college teaching. Although participants in all three studies identified subject matter expertise as an important competency, they emphasized several other skill sets as being important for meaningful student learning. Those skills are related to the use of authentic activities and multiple instructional delivery models, multiple ways of assessing student learning, and skills that are necessary outside the classroom in their teaching roles. Participants also emphasized interpersonal and affective components of effective teaching.  相似文献   

10.
This case study tracks the application of project-based learning (PBL) during four separate college terms at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. Each term follows a different learning community of first-term college students enrolled in a program of developmental education (DE), reading, writing, math, and college survival and success (CSS) courses. The study documents the journey from a pilot PBL model to the improved model used today, focuses on each term's PBL goal of increasing student success, and outlines how the PBL succeeded or failed based on student demonstration of their learning community's intended core outcomes. Whereas the initial two terms’ projects were unsuccessful, the framing of a new question and the addition of service learning in the next two terms’ projects made a significant improvement in student self-motivation and helped students achieve intended core outcomes by their own agency. Such active learning and self reliance increased students’ confidence as it challenged them to use their new course skills to create a project they were proud to present to a wide audience. This study then explores the challenges and benefits of integrating the two curricular frameworks, learning communities and PBL, within interdisciplinary courses that include service learning. Considering the already established literature on the success of learning communities and the continually growing literature on the implementation of PBL, this study ultimately demonstrates how to arrive at a project that invigorates a learning community of students, whether the learning community is in one course or spread throughout several interdisciplinary courses.  相似文献   

11.
“Deep learning” represents student engagement in approaches to learning that emphasize integration, synthesis, and reflection. Because learning is a shared responsibility between students and faculty, it is important to determine whether faculty members emphasize deep approaches to learning and to assess how much students employ these approaches. This study examines the effect of discipline on student use of and faculty members’ emphasis on deep approaches to learning as well as on the relationships between deep approaches to learning and selected educational outcomes. Using data from over 80,000 seniors and 10,000 faculty members we found that deep approaches to learning were more prevalent in Biglan’s soft, pure, and life fields compared to their counterparts. The differences were largest between soft and hard fields. We also found that seniors who engage more frequently in deep learning behaviors report greater educational gains, higher grades, and greater satisfaction with college, and that the strength of these relationships is relatively consistent across disciplinary categories.  相似文献   

12.
ABSTRACT

Despite good career prospects in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, persistence of students in STEM fields of study at the community college and transfer to universities to pursue STEM majors is often quite low. Theories of persistence emphasize the importance of engagement, integration, validation, and financial assistance. The DCCCD STEM Institute is a comprehensive cocurricular program for community college STEM students. It illustrates the application of persistence theories in a multicollege urban district with a diverse student body. The STEM Institute uses a student/faculty cohort model with mentoring, professional skills programming, and scholarship support to transform student perceptions of themselves, integrate them into a STEM educational community, and validate their membership within that community. Institute membership also reduces isolation and financial concerns as potential barriers to persistence. STEM faculty also participate in professional skill development through a cross-college and cross-disciplinary cohort. Data on students who participated in the DCCCD STEM Institute from 2010 through 2014 show that 92% remain in a STEM educational or career pathway. Important practice implications for community college professionals include (1) forming student and faculty cohorts, (2) facilitating the development of mentoring relationships, (3) providing adequate centralized staffing, and (4) integrating resources and opportunities into a unified cocurricular program.  相似文献   

13.
简要分析建构主义教学的特征,并从建构主义教学的角度,对目前英美等国许多大学普遍采用的大学生学习评估方法以及各种方法的利弊进行阐述和比较。同时,对提高中国高校学习评估的可靠性和有效性提出建议。  相似文献   

14.
The current rhetoric around using data to improve community college student outcomes with only limited research on data-driven decision-making (DDDM) within postsecondary education compels a more comprehensive understanding of colleges’ capacity for using data to inform decisions. Based on an analysis of faculty and administrators’ perceptions and behaviors at 41 community colleges that participated in an initiative to improve student success, an argument is presented to include social capital as an explicit component of the capacity of community colleges for using data on student outcomes to increase student success. Building on Newmann, King, and Rigdon’s (1997) conceptualization of schools’ organizational capacity to meet accountability expectations and Smylie and Evans’ (2006) exploration of the role of Coleman’s (1988) social capital in policy implementation, this study found a relationship between the presence of forms of social capital as part of the organizational capacity for DDDM and the frequency and extent of data use among faculty and administrators. In light of research on organizational learning that suggests that social capital creates opportunities for the creation of new knowledge—such as possible solutions for persistent problems of student success—and research on organizational routines as mechanisms for change and preservation in organizations, this article concludes with recommendations for community colleges undertaking data-driven educational reform.  相似文献   

15.
This essay describes how the use of a concept inventory has enhanced professional development and curriculum reform efforts of a faculty teaching community. The Host Pathogen Interactions (HPI) teaching team is composed of research and teaching faculty with expertise in HPI who share the goal of improving the learning experience of students in nine linked undergraduate microbiology courses. To support evidence-based curriculum reform, we administered our HPI Concept Inventory as a pre- and postsurvey to approximately 400 students each year since 2006. The resulting data include student scores as well as their open-ended explanations for distractor choices. The data have enabled us to address curriculum reform goals of 1) reconciling student learning with our expectations, 2) correlating student learning with background variables, 3) understanding student learning across institutions, 4) measuring the effect of teaching techniques on student learning, and 5) demonstrating how our courses collectively form a learning progression. The analysis of the concept inventory data has anchored and deepened the team's discussions of student learning. Reading and discussing students' responses revealed the gap between our understanding and the students' understanding. We provide evidence to support the concept inventory as a tool for assessing student understanding of HPI concepts and faculty development.  相似文献   

16.
Academia in the United States stands face-to-face with the constant call for greater levels of assessment and accountability. Academics question whether our students are learning what they’re taught? Are they able to secure employment upon completing their education? Are they prepared to be active, productive citizens in society? Community colleges provide education to those who may typically not have the opportunity to attend an institution of higher education. A foundation of any assessment process is the articulation of the core learning outcomes. It is from this foundation, then, that community college faculty can start assessing the effectiveness of teaching and curricular design. The present investigation details a project that focused on creating discipline-specific student learning outcomes and how these outcomes can be utilized to aligning learning outcomes and mapping to curriculum. Communication studies faculty can utilize the learning outcomes to strengthen and clarify curriculum, demonstrate the acquisition of competencies, and improve departmental offerings.  相似文献   

17.
This study examines variability in the extent to which faculty members in the disciplinary-based academic environments of Holland’s theory emphasize different student learning outcomes in their classes and whether such differences are comparable for those in “consistent” versus “inconsistent” environments. The findings show wide variation in the extent to which faculty members in four of the academic environments of Holland’s theory emphasize the alternative student learning outcomes and that such differences vary based on the level of consistency or inconsistency in the environmental profiles of the environments. The implications of these findings for future research using Holland’s theory to understand longitudinal patterns of change and stability in the attitudes, interests, and abilities of college students as well as variability in the patterns of professional attitudes and behaviors of college faculty are discussed. Attention is also devoted to the policy development and practical implications of these findings for academic advisors, career counselors, and other college and university leaders.  相似文献   

18.
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19.
As in many universities, class sizes have increased more quickly than teaching and learning resources. A related challenge is the increasing diversity of the student body in terms of socio-economic background, learning styles, English language ability and preparedness. This paper explores ways in which traditional face-to-face teaching methods (such as lectures and tutorials) can be combined with online teaching and learning activities in a “blended” learning approach to improve teaching and learning and to accommodate student diversity. Using a large first year Economics class as a case study, data were collected on student perceptions of the use of blended learning. A statistical model was used on a sample of 50 students to determine which online activities were most beneficial in improving student performance. The majority of students agreed that replacing one lecture a week with online activities and resources improved their learning, although about 20 % of the class would have preferred more lecturing and fewer online resources. Statistical finding showed that more active online resources, such as multiple choice and graphing questions, were most beneficial in improving student performance, but that more passive lecture capture was also useful in modelling the discourse of the discipline.  相似文献   

20.
Over the past decade, continuous quality improvement (CQI) has emerged as a strategy for documenting and systematically building academic program quality. This study used a nationally representative sample of engineering faculty members and students to examine the influence of faculty members’ CQI activities on the relationships between student and institutional characteristics, student experiences in- and out-of-class, and student learning outcomes. A cluster analysis validated the use of four CQI-related variables to differentiate engineering programs into high- and low-CQI groups. In a multiple group path analysis, the models for the high and low groups differed significantly, supporting the hypothesis that CQI indirectly influences the relationships between student and institutional characteristics, student experiences, and student learning outcomes. Further, the path results suggested a number of modifications to the analytical and conceptual frameworks used in the study.  相似文献   

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