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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