BSI - Day two - Monday 8-11-08

 

Hello everyone.

 

 

great day 2 of the BSI Summer Institute. more thoughts, ideas, etc.

 

Basic Skills Day 2

 

We started out the day with a fun demo on Student Learning Outcomes where students demonstrated “clapping” and then a rubric used by faculty to assess the outcomes.

 

Next we did an exercise practicing spotting the differences between a SLO, Objective and a Goal.

 

Then we broke into groups and we worked in a Basic Skills Writing workshop. We broke into groups to work on an creating a “5 minute lesson plan”. We went on a scavenger hunt on the hotel premises, and decided the title of our lesson plan was “Getting to Know your Campus Student Services” -  the lesson plan included active learning and involved students visiting the library, interviewing the staff in the library, learning about the services offered, and engaging in activities to achieve the goals of the lesson plan. We then debriefed in the meeting with other groups on their lesson plans. This would make a great workshop for faculty to integrate “active learning” into their classes. We then spent an hour working on our own “new” active learning lesson plan which will be posted in a gallery tomorrow, and we received input from our groups and cohorts while we worked on our own individual lesson plans.

 

Finally we listened to a presentation on “Bridging Cultural Differences” and reviewed and discussed  handouts on “20(Self) Critical Things I will Do to Be a Better Multicultural Educator”, "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education”, “Six Areas of Diversity Curriculum Infusion” and “Multiple Intelligences” and “Teaching Strategies”

 

Thoughts

 

1. Customized Counseling -  I sat next to a counselor and certified executive transition coach who works on a Title V which works with high-risk students. Each student in the Title V cohort must take an “Intro to College Class”, and the most important part of that class is the customized counseling for students. Students are assessed for values, and skills and an Ed Plan developed based upon their interests, values and skills. They have a “Intro to College” class required

 

2. Basic Skills Academy - I discussed with Mickey Hong, Staff Development Coordinator at LA City College their plans for BSI. They are going to do the following

  a. set up a BSI/SSI Committee

  b. pay a full time faculty release time - .3 to be the BSI Coordinator

  c. the BSI Coordinator will develop 4 workshops in the Fall and 4 in the Spring

  d Faculty will take both the Fall and Spring workshops, and at the end they will have a project they will complete (materials, content, curriculum, etc. ) which can be used in Basic Skills, and then they will continue working as mentors, and handle future Basic Skills workshops, and upon graduation from the academy they will receive a modest stipend.

 

3. Basic Skills Cohorts - talked with Mike Climo - ESL faculty from Mission also here and he suggests that we develop curriculum in Basic Skills and tie it to our Career Technical Education so that at the end of 3 years they will complete their Basic Skills and also certificates, eg. Child Development, AJ, CAOT, Culinary Arts, ....

 

4.  Supplemental Instruction - in addition to tutoring we need to develop supplemental instruction materials including web content for our Basic Skills students

 

5. Early Alert System - good Basic Skills includes an Early Alert system. We need to get more faculty using the “referral system”  under the faculty portal system. We need to provide workshops and some incentives or motivation to faculty to participate in an Early Alert System.

 

6.  Coordination of Efforts - We need to do the following: 

  a. set up a BSI/SSI Committee

  b. select a full time faculty BSI Coordinator and provide them with clerical and student worker support and .3 release time

  c. have discussions with Educational Planning Committee, BSI Committee, Staff Development, Institutional Researcher, SLO Coordinator,  Curriculum Chair, etc. and plan the implementation of a Basic Skills Action Plan integrating the Student Equity Plan, Educational Master Plan, College goals and Strategic Plan, Program Review, Curriculum Review, and ARCC statistics

  d. we need to determine the baseline and benchmark ARCC we want to aim for with our efforts so that we can measure our success.

  e. each planned action with Basic Skills Action plan needs to include the effective practices and strategy we will employ, determine if it is a new activity or an expansion of existing programs, prioritize and then develop and tie it to the budget process of Basic Skills

 f. good Basic Skills includes coordination of efforts of

              1. tutoring   2. flex and staff development  3. counseling

 g. integrate and engage our part time faculty. They have great ideas, and enthusiasm, and teach a lot of our Basic Skills students.

 

Well that is it for Day 2 - today we will cover the Career Technical components of Basic Skills, and breakout sessions.

 

have a great day.

 

David

 

 

 

 

-- 
David Jordan, Esq. - Attorney at Law -  Director Los Angeles Mission College Paralegal Studies Program
13356 Eldridge Ave, Sylmar, Ca 91342-3200
cell phone = 818-415-2015, school = 818-364-7720 webpage = http://lamission.edu/law
Chair of Technology Committee – http://lamission.edu/facstaff/technology
Chair of Distance Education – http://lamission.edu/de