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Sunday, August 23, 2015

Should You Run Before You Walk?

This is the third and final conference session for the asynchronous conference, The Different Aspects of a Library Collection.



Recently, college libraries have been advertising information literacy courses to be embedded from within regular courses.  It requires the Developmental Reading professor to share their lesson plans with the “liaison” librarian.  The liaison librarian, then designs an information literacy course from within the Developmental Reading course. Both the librarian and professor confer with each other about the meshing of the two courses into one before the course would begin.  The idea is to appear seamlessly to the students who enter into the course.  In theory, this plan would work great but there are not enough liaison librarians to work on each developmental reading course.  There cannot be a “one size fits all” template for the information literacy course and the developmental reading course partnership.  The reading comprehension needs are usually too great in the developmental reading courses to be a cookie-cutter solution that would try to lend to a partnership of the library that cannot be cookie-cutter either.  The two courses end up not working seamlessly and the students become confused with not knowing which instructions to follow from their professor or their librarian.


Many of my Developmental Reading students cannot read or write. Speaking, also, as a librarian, I have found that some of the students’ only reading outlet is through reading texts that come in every minute on their smart phones and tablets.  If they need to perform research, the students do not have time in their busy lives to go to the library.  They “Google-it” through their smart phones and tablets.  Then, this leaves time for work and family commitments.

If the students could be shown the importance of learning the ability to know when they need information, when to get that information, how to get that information, and demonstrate that they know that information, they could have a chance of successfully passing the developmental reading course and quite possibility other courses that they would need to take in the future.   The emphasis has to be not on what the students did not learn in K-12th grades.  It has to be on what they need to learn now.


The Association of College and Research Libraries defines information literacy as “a set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information." (http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency).  Every year there will be between 16% and 40% entering freshmen who are unprepared for college level courses (Boylan, 2001, p.3).  This will happen in any institution.  Their unpreparedness can range from lack of development in “their writing skills, and many need to develop their mathematics skills” (Boylan, 2001, p. 3).    Different higher educational institutions have defined how to save information literacy when these unprepared college freshmen come through the door.  The students take an entrance test that places them in different developmental courses and college planning courses so that they will succeed.  How can they take more courses if they do not understand what they had gotten wrong on the entrance test?



Taking the Test Leads to a Problem


College Board’s tests ( ACCUPLACER ®; ACT’s COMPASS ®; ASSET ®) and locally designed tests are commercial or standardized tests.  These types of test have allowed the higher educational institutions to measure different issues that are covered in the test “but they do not have any specified or consistent cut score or level that designates readiness for credit-bearing courses” (Conley, 2010c, p. 5). So, the educational institutions have designated grades for the students to achieve in developmental courses that would show “college-readiness” for credit-bearing courses. 


The test works only if it were aligned with the content covered in the entry-level courses of that institution. Unfortunately, college students are unfamiliar with their formats and high school administrators are not familiar with the content covered.  It is because of this non-consistency that can cause students to be wrongly classified in developmental education or “pre” college courses (Conley, 2010c, p. 5-6).


As one study had shown, these types of tests cannot be the only way to determine what educational needs entering freshmen may have.  Different tests can generate different results, for example, different profiles of what they lack can be generated.  This is dependent on what content is covered by each test.  These commercialized tests seem to lack “information on student key cognitive strategies and higher-order thinking in addition to some specific content knowledge areas” (Conley, 2010b, p.16).


Placement tests analyze students’ comprehension rates through short literary and nonfiction passages.  The content used for their reading proficiency did not resemble any reading materials that would be found in their college textbooks (Conley,2010b, p. 16). Can it effectively test them on their information literacy skills on how to find information and use it effectively for college course-work and for work-loads in their future careers?


Higher Education’s Solution


High school students are not guaranteed success in college when they have completed college-preparatory courses (Conley, p. 4).  Preparation for the graduate would come from their high school’s curriculum that would:  (a)  measure student academic progress; (b) observe the methods in which states, districts, schools, principals, and teachers are educating students;  and (c) observe  teachers’ adjusting  their educating styles (DOE, 2010 p. 8).  In high school English, mathematics, and science courses, students have not been taught  how  “to draw inferences, interpret results, analyze conflicting source documents, support arguments with evidence, solve complex problems that have no obvious answer, draw conclusions, offer  explanations, conduct research, and generally think deeply about what they are being taught” (Conley, 2007c, p. 23).

There is no teaching to the test.  In order to be college-ready, students would need to be taught the following skills in high school: “expanding vocabulary and learning word analysis;  strategic reading; writing skills;  problem-solving abilities; thoroughly understand the basic concepts, principles, and techniques of algebra;  teaching the steps of the scientific method; use empirical evidence to draw conclusions, and how they subject such conclusions to challenge and interpretation;  skills of interpreting sources, evaluating evidence and competing claims, and understanding historical themes and the importance of key events”  (Conley, 2007c, p. 26-27).  Without these, unprepared high school graduates scoring low on the college placement tests would be placed into developmental education courses to learn pre-college content that was not offered or not mastered in high school.   


Through the developmental education course track, entering freshmen can have a “successful transition to the college environment” (Conley, 2008b, p. 24).  After finishing the developmental education course track, the college students would show “development of key cognitive strategies, mastery of key content knowledge, proficiency with a set of academic behaviors, and sufficient “college knowledge” about what postsecondary education requires” (Conley, 2010a, p. 18).


Eighty-three per cent of college students who passed developmental reading could, in 2011, “pass their first college social science course” (Boylan & Bonham, 2011, p. 31).    Also, in 2011, 77.2% students who passed developmental mathematics, could “also pass their first college mathematics course; and of those passing developmental English, 91.1% also pass their first college English course” (Boylan & Bonham , 2011, p. 31).


One of many solutions that higher education institutions’ have created to combat college unpreparedness and information illiteracy is to place the unprepared students into developmental reading, English, writing, and mathematics.  They have also created a college preparation course to help students adjust to the attitudes, environment, and studying skills needed to succeed in college.  The students I receive each semester usually have a years-worth of courses to complete with a passing grade of a “B” (or greater) for Mathematics and “C” (or greater) for Reading, Writing, and English.


It is through these courses that some higher education institutions believe students would learn how to determine when they would need information to help them solve problems in college course work, how to know where to go to get it and how to use it. Seventy per cent of college students entering community colleges are placed into remedial courses (http://chronicle.com/article/Remedial-Educators-Warn-of/231937/ ).    This usually occurs because they did not make acceptable scores on the entrance level tests or the institutions made the assumption that they needed these courses to prepare for college-credit bearing courses.


But those courses were not the remedial courses that were for students that were great at writing or mathematics.  Remedial courses were meant as a refresher of skills that were already learned in high school but needed a “pre” course to take before the “real” entry-level course would be taken (Boylan & Bonham, 2007).  The “pre” courses were known as existing in the institution’s remedial programs and were designed “to compensate for deficiencies in prior learning” (Boylan & Bonham, 2007, p. 2).  Developmental education courses were for students who needed to be taught what they had never learned or had forgotten.


Emphasis on Self-Evaluation of Teachers, Staff, and Students


Institutions would need to also emphasize faculty and staff learning from each other through a collaborative effort.  This would be through a self-evaluation of the institution and a collection of “data about goal achievement; most colleges do not understand, or fail to make, the critical links between goal and expected outcomes in identifying the appropriate data to be collected” (Roueche and Roueche, 2003, p. 8).  Once placed into the developmental education course track from the placement tests, the students would need mandatory completion of those courses in order to be prepared for college level courses. 
The underprepared entry-level college student is in this condition because they do not understand the difference between college and high school (Conley, 2010b).  These students are adults and not children.  They must be responsible for their actions. 


College allows these students to practice and increase their skills that they had learned in the high school and lower levels. It is a time of transition that takes high school competence and builds it up to college readiness (Conley, 2007c).  Some college courses are sometimes called the same name as some of the high school courses.  What the students are not prepared for is the fast pace in which they are taught a large coverage of material in a short amount of time.  Students would have to adjust in making critical thinking and analysis of collected data.


Developmental education courses and academic success in those courses are linked when professional development and trained staff are a part of the learning process (Boylan, Bliss, Bonham & Claxton, 1992).   The effectiveness of individual program components of developmental education programs would need to increase.  The following are the components:  instruction; counseling; tutoring (Boylan, Bliss, & Bonham, 1994).


Studies at La Guardia Community College (Chaffee, 1992) had shown that teaching critical thinking helped the under-prepared students.  Courses, programs, and activities designed to enhance critical thinking improved students’ performance in reading and writing (Chaffee, 1992).  Students were satisfied with the course content when the course used critical 
thinking (Harris & Eleser, 1997). 



Thoughts on the Subject


For five years, I taught entering college freshmen developmental reading.  The students had been tested and placed into this particular course.  Since most of these students said that they could read, they could not figure out why they were placed into developmental reading. During the first few days of class, I could readily establish that they had no time management, study, or comprehension skills.  I was their professor for developmental reading, however they needed instruction in the use of the library.  Therefore it appears to me that these two professionals should have been meld into one course into information literacy instead of a bare course into developmental reading.





 References

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Boylan, H. (2002). What works: Research-based best practices in developmental education. Boone, NC: Continuous Quality Improvement Network with the National Center for Developmental Education.

Boylan, H. R. & Bonham, B. S. (2011). Seven myths about developmental education. Research & Teaching in Developmental Education, 27(2), 29-36.

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Boylan, H., Bliss, L., & Bonham, B. (1994). National study of developmental education: Characteristics of faculty and staff. Paper presented at the National Association for Developmental Education Conference. Retrieved from http://www.ncde.appstate.edu/reservereading/Outcomes_of Remediation.htm

Boylan, H., Bliss, L., Bonham, B., & Claxton, C. (1992). The state of the arts in developmental education. Paper presented at the First National Conference on Research in Developmental Education, Charlotte, NC. Retrieved from http://www.ncde.appstate.edu/ reserve_reading/Outcomes of Remediation.htm

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Conley, D. (2010c).  College and career ready: Helping all students succeed beyond high school.  San Francisco, CA.

Department of Education (DOE). (2010).  A blueprint for reform: The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Washington, DC.

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Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability. (2007). Steps can be taken to reduce remediation rates; 78% of Community College Students, 10% of University Students Need Remediation. Report No. 06-40.  Retrieved from http://www.oppaga.state.fl.us/reports/pdf/0640rpt.pdf

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