Week one is over and done, and it was a pretty good one. For breakfast: fake Burger King; for lunch: fake Subway; for dinner: Joe's Italian Kitchen, a real, off-campus Italian place - I had baked ziti; Ed bought the table drinks and desserts.
Putting things into perspective, this first week was essentially about placement. It was about assessment and placement, but no one should labor under the impression that assessment meant anything other than initial placement assessment. I thought the presenter was fantastic and the material worthwhile and interesting. The morning consisted of a recap, a post-test, a Q&A, and preview of next week.
A couple interesting things from today: it'd be interesting to ID all the faculty teaching developmental classes and the first college level class (i.e. 9002, 9013, 9024, and 1033 -or- 9010, 9020, 1101, etc.) and 4-6 weeks into the class, give them a roster of their class and have them go student by student saying "this student should have been placed in a level above/this student is placed correctly/this student should have been placed in a level below." Nothing affective - behavior/attendance/etc. - just performance/proficiency. You'd have to suss them out, separating newly entered students from students who have advanced through the levels, but you could probably learn quite a bit from both groups.
Every semester I've taught, there's always two or three students that really should have been placed in comp I and one or two that really should have been put in 9010. This isn't a huge deal - from what I can tell, a test that correctly placed 27/30 student is a pretty good test. Still, the actual number is probably greater. It'd be nice to see if we could get to a point where all professors say that at least 85% (maybe 80) of their class is appropriately placed. Maybe they'd already say that.
I know that when I talk to the math faculty, there seems to be a great deal of fluidity with the material and the student's abilities. Every semester, there are students that go through 9002 and successfully jump into and pass 9024. I hear often that 9013 students are probably ready for 1033. I don't know if that's true. I think the reason I'm thinking about the math side of it so much is because I have such a limited intuitive knowledge of math - I'm not jaundiced by assuming things.
The weather has been perfect all day. Dinner was good. The group is hiking at 7AM tomorrow; I plan on sleeping in. Tomorrow night, there's a bbq and fireworks at Hunter and Barbara's house. Yesterday, they asked if there were any vegetarians. I guess I'm the only one, but there's going to be something for me, too, which is a thoughtful touch.
I think that difference between 9013 and 1033 is huge. Those students that should've been placed in 1033(and are in 9013) don't need the lab so I don't know how many there are, if any.
ReplyDeleteI think there is more students in 9024 who should've been in 1033.
Also, a lot of them are placed higher than they should be(that's only my opinion). I know students who were struggling in 9013 and now are in 1033; doing better then those automatically placed in 1033.