BSI - Sunday - 8-10 - Day One

I drove down yesterday to the BSI Summer Institute, and was on the wait list and was able to get into the conference as there were no shows (as Alfred recommended). The conference had been sold out for months.

The Conference will focus on Basic Skills. Three of the outcomes are to help faculty develop and implement data-driven effective pedagogical practices, and to create a plan to train faculty on their home campus concerning strategies and pedagogies that help students with Basic Skills needs for BSI Coordinators and full time faculty, and to begin discussions on how to create statewide cohorts of faculty.  There are over 300 faculty from all over the state.

I will be meeting with the various faculty around our District to discuss their BSI and SSI efforts

So far here are some facts and ideas from yesterday:

1. SLOs- we should check our Basic Skills classes, ESL, Dev Comm, etc. and see if the exit skills for those classes match up with our regular college classes.

2. 70-85% of students assess into Basic skills but only 27% take Basic Skills. Part of the problem is the BOGG grants only allow so many units and so students do not want to "waste them" on taking Basic Skills classes

3. Some students assess low in English but not in Math, and vice versa. There is no real uniform picture of a Basic Skills student

4. 45-50% of Basic Skills students do not know at least one Financial Aid tool or opportunity.

5. Program SLO's are very important on ensuring Basic Skills success

6. On Assessment scores of students we need to improve the "diagnostics" to determine why the score is low. It could be social, economic, physical,  enivronmental, motivational, etc.

7. 60% of students in Calif. Comm. Colleges are first generation going to college. Over half of our students enroll without clear educational goals in mind and are unaware of the steps necessary to reach the goal (source:student survey)

8. Over 52% of students work at least 25 hours (studies show that students who work over 20 hours receive a grade lower score in their classes - "overwhelmed and tired"

9. Over 47% of basic skills are taught by part time faculty

10. In most colleges Staff Development is conducted via flex day and mandatory best practices twice per semester but are not tied into the Educational Master Plans and the College Strategic Plans and the Basic Skills and Student Success Master Plans

11. Most colleges do not implement an exit survey for students who either formally drop the course or simply stop attending class.

that is it for now. I am off to continental breakfast and a wonderful day of learning and collaborating. "Go team"

hey wasn't the opening ceremony at the Olympics and the competition "awe-inspiring"- "Go USA".

dj