Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Friday, July 23, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
2
Almost there. It's weird, leaving a place you've been for a month. I keep looking around and thinking that this is probably the last time I'll be here. I mean, maybe I'll come back to Boone to visit or do something with ASU, but probably not. I remember when I left Arizona, I didn't think much of it. When I left Portland, I was sad; I didn't think I'd ever make it back (Amanda and I went in 2008, though). Leaving Worcester, I was just glad to be getting out of there, but I've been here in Boone long enough to feel a little sad about it.
That being said, I'm out of here at 10:30 sharp tomorrow.
That being said, I'm out of here at 10:30 sharp tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
3
Good day yesterday. Only two more nights to sleep in my Kellogg bed, which looks and feels like it was made from foam rubber and duct tape.
Hunter spoke for the entirety of yesterday's session. The morning was primarily on the idea of I-E-O, which stands for input/environment/output. The idea is that when comparing two schools, one should take into account all three factors. Two schools that both graduate 90% of their nursing students might not be equal if one accepts students with significantly lower GPAs.
The most interesting thing he said in the afternoon was that he's never been able to find any correlation between a person's degree and their success in teaching (as measured by getting students to pass subsequent college level courses). He said one of the best teachers he's ever come across was a math teacher in New Mexico whose only credential was a BA in philosophy.
Today: guest speaker/Michael Collins
9 - 11:30 / Jobs for the future
2 / mtg with advisor
later, packing. :)
Hunter spoke for the entirety of yesterday's session. The morning was primarily on the idea of I-E-O, which stands for input/environment/output. The idea is that when comparing two schools, one should take into account all three factors. Two schools that both graduate 90% of their nursing students might not be equal if one accepts students with significantly lower GPAs.
The most interesting thing he said in the afternoon was that he's never been able to find any correlation between a person's degree and their success in teaching (as measured by getting students to pass subsequent college level courses). He said one of the best teachers he's ever come across was a math teacher in New Mexico whose only credential was a BA in philosophy.
Today: guest speaker/Michael Collins
9 - 11:30 / Jobs for the future
2 / mtg with advisor
later, packing. :)
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
4
Yesterday was good. Hunter entered to the theme from Superman, and that sort of set the tone. He had this really nice speech at the beginning where he talked about the opportunity that college represented for people and cautioned everyone not to let anyone ever belittle the students we work with. I never really see him get worked up about anything other than when he recounts stories of it when someone downplayed developmental education or the students working through those course.
The day started with a fairly basic review - the differences between assessment and evaluation (short answer: assessment is what other people do to you, evaluation is what you do for yourself), formative and summative processes, etc. We then moved into identifying the values we bring in to the workplace and talked about "measuring what we value rather than valuing what we can measure."
It was more less a natural progression, which I enjoyed. Figuring out what you value about your work isn't terribly hard after thinking about it. Then it's just a matter of measuring it and sharing it with people. Hunter said the industry standard for developmental courses is figuring out which percentage of your students go on to take a college course and earn a "C" or better. And that eliminates the FGCU problem (as I've called it - students who simply go to Edison for developmental course, never intending to take college credit at Edison) - if we had 100 students take a developmental course, and only 50 of them took a college credit course at Edison, and only 40 passed it, our passing rate would be 80%, not 40%.
Today is:
9-11:45 / Evaluation
1 - 4 / A model for evaluating developmental programs
From what he said yesterday, this is essentially the process of going back to the campus and eyeballing "what works."
The day started with a fairly basic review - the differences between assessment and evaluation (short answer: assessment is what other people do to you, evaluation is what you do for yourself), formative and summative processes, etc. We then moved into identifying the values we bring in to the workplace and talked about "measuring what we value rather than valuing what we can measure."
It was more less a natural progression, which I enjoyed. Figuring out what you value about your work isn't terribly hard after thinking about it. Then it's just a matter of measuring it and sharing it with people. Hunter said the industry standard for developmental courses is figuring out which percentage of your students go on to take a college course and earn a "C" or better. And that eliminates the FGCU problem (as I've called it - students who simply go to Edison for developmental course, never intending to take college credit at Edison) - if we had 100 students take a developmental course, and only 50 of them took a college credit course at Edison, and only 40 passed it, our passing rate would be 80%, not 40%.
Today is:
9-11:45 / Evaluation
1 - 4 / A model for evaluating developmental programs
From what he said yesterday, this is essentially the process of going back to the campus and eyeballing "what works."
Monday, July 19, 2010
5
Last week at Kellogg. It's sort of a weird experience, all this winding down. I can't wait to get home, but I'm going to miss the people here. And the place - Boone is beautiful, and there's plenty of undiscovered country left.
Speaking of: on Friday, Jason, his friend from NY, and I went into Banner Elk, NC in search of Banner Elk Falls. After a bit of meandering, we found it roughly near the TN border. A short hike, and we were on the top end of about a 60' falls. There were some people down below, swimming and sunning in the pool at the bottom. There were jumpers. Someone had set up a series of ropes, so people could shimmy up the side of the cliff (quite an angle; not as hard as it seems) to climb out onto the natural ledges. There was one at about 20', one at about 40', and then the top. We jumped once from the 20', and then wandered down river, not finding much, and returning.
Other than that, the weekend was sedate. Laundry, television on my computer, and random meals (Black Cat, some Mexican place, Mellow Mushroom...)
Today:
9-11:45 / The Evaluation Mystique
1-4 / Purposes of evaluation
Speaking of: on Friday, Jason, his friend from NY, and I went into Banner Elk, NC in search of Banner Elk Falls. After a bit of meandering, we found it roughly near the TN border. A short hike, and we were on the top end of about a 60' falls. There were some people down below, swimming and sunning in the pool at the bottom. There were jumpers. Someone had set up a series of ropes, so people could shimmy up the side of the cliff (quite an angle; not as hard as it seems) to climb out onto the natural ledges. There was one at about 20', one at about 40', and then the top. We jumped once from the 20', and then wandered down river, not finding much, and returning.
Other than that, the weekend was sedate. Laundry, television on my computer, and random meals (Black Cat, some Mexican place, Mellow Mushroom...)
Today:
9-11:45 / The Evaluation Mystique
1-4 / Purposes of evaluation
Friday, July 16, 2010
If I had a hammer
Well, it was indeed a long day yesterday; went well, though.
We had two days of diversity training, and Dr. Tafari said that was probably a good thing because that's about all most people can handle. When he first said that, I wasn't sure I agreed with him, but I think he's on to something. Toward the end of the second day, people weren't really able to discuss things objectively, and most people were simply sharing personal experiences. Not that that's not valuable in and of itself, but that's no long diversity training, that's some sort of process group. I don't think he meant that people can;t handle extended periods of diversity training because they get angry or resentful or hurt or anything; I think maybe he meant that people just can't stay focused on something like this for that long. And he didn't call it diversity training; he called it humanity training, which wasn't nearly as ominous as I had feared.
Humanity training, as he calls it, is really just a way of approaching diversity training from a more individual (external) perspective. We've seen this, to some degree. It's not like a person who immigrated from Haiti is claiming an African-American perspective. And it's not like a white guy from New York City really has the perspective of a white guy who grew up in rural Georgia. His bottom line was that you never really know what someone else's perspective is like unless you ask them, which sounds like pretty good advice.
Todays concludes week 3.
9-11:30 / The critical multicultural imperative
If it's anything like critical theory, I predict a rough 2 1/2 hours, but I'm curious to see where it all goes.
This afternoon, I might head into Banner Elk Falls with Jason and a guy he knew in college (who's flying in this morning). Otherwise, I'm hoping for a fairly sedate weekend. Next week is the big coup de grace - Hunter Boylan's week, I guess they had no choice but to save it for last, but I have to think most of our heads will be elsewhere - we return home a week from today.
We had two days of diversity training, and Dr. Tafari said that was probably a good thing because that's about all most people can handle. When he first said that, I wasn't sure I agreed with him, but I think he's on to something. Toward the end of the second day, people weren't really able to discuss things objectively, and most people were simply sharing personal experiences. Not that that's not valuable in and of itself, but that's no long diversity training, that's some sort of process group. I don't think he meant that people can;t handle extended periods of diversity training because they get angry or resentful or hurt or anything; I think maybe he meant that people just can't stay focused on something like this for that long. And he didn't call it diversity training; he called it humanity training, which wasn't nearly as ominous as I had feared.
Humanity training, as he calls it, is really just a way of approaching diversity training from a more individual (external) perspective. We've seen this, to some degree. It's not like a person who immigrated from Haiti is claiming an African-American perspective. And it's not like a white guy from New York City really has the perspective of a white guy who grew up in rural Georgia. His bottom line was that you never really know what someone else's perspective is like unless you ask them, which sounds like pretty good advice.
Todays concludes week 3.
9-11:30 / The critical multicultural imperative
If it's anything like critical theory, I predict a rough 2 1/2 hours, but I'm curious to see where it all goes.
This afternoon, I might head into Banner Elk Falls with Jason and a guy he knew in college (who's flying in this morning). Otherwise, I'm hoping for a fairly sedate weekend. Next week is the big coup de grace - Hunter Boylan's week, I guess they had no choice but to save it for last, but I have to think most of our heads will be elsewhere - we return home a week from today.
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