National Presentations:

“Global Skills for College Completion: Faculty Innovation and Student Success.”  Innovations 2010, Baltimore, MD.   Rosemary Arca, Marisa A. Klages, and Katrina Nichols. March 2010.

“Pedagogy in Developmental Education.” The Madison Summit. Madison, WI.  Yasser  Hassebo.  January 2010.

“Global Skills for College Completion: Tools and Routines.” Innovations 2011 San Diego, CA. Marisa A. Klages, Trisha O’Connor, Bronte Miller, Terry Shamblin.   March 2011.

“Pedagogical Patterning: Discovering the Pattern of Developmental Educators.”  Innovations 2011 San Diego, CA.  Gail Mellow, Diana Woolis, Louise Yarnall.            March 2011.

“Global Skills for College Completion: An Update from the Road.” Innovations 2011 San Diego, CA. Teresa Demonico and Eric Kraus.  March 2011.

“Digital Multiplicity: The Global Skills for College Completion Project to Create a Replicable Model for Success in Basic Writing.” Conference on College Composition and Communication J. Elizabeth Clark, Marisa A. Klages, and Reid Sunahara. Atlanta, GA.  March 2011.

“Action Pedagogy: Global Skills for College Completion” American Educational Research Association. Diana Woolis and Louise Yarnall. Denver, CO. April 2011.

“Technology in Learning Services and Social Supports.” The 3^rd Annual Gates Postsecondary Success Grantee Convening J. Elizabeth Clark and Yasser Hassebo. Seattle, WA. June 2011.

“Quality Developmental Education Instruction and the Global Skills for College Completion Initiative.” Jobs for the Future: Education for Economic Opportunity Postsecondary Success Learning Exchange: YouthBuild USA. Yasser Hassebo and Marisa A. Klages. Crystal City, VA. October 2011.

“Reflective Practice in Basic Skills: The Global Skills for Completion Grant Routines for Reflecting, Collaborating, Innovating.” College Reading and Learning Association. San Diego, CA. Rosemary Arca and  Terry Shamblin. November2011.

“Pedagogy Matters! How the Global Skills for College Completion Project Elevates Classroom Practice and Ultimately Student Success.” D.R.E.A.M. Annual Meeting Dallas, TX. Bronte Miller. February 2012.

“Pedagogy Matters!  Refining Teaching Practice to Increase Student Success.” Innovations 2012. Philadelphia, PA. Rosemary Arca, Bronte Miller, Kathy Perino, and Kate Smith. March 2012.

“Digital Coaching for Measurable Outcomes in Basic Writing: Preliminary Results from the Global Skills for College Completion Project” Conference on College Composition and Communication. St. Louis, MO. Rosemary Arca, Jason Evans, and Robin Ozz. March 2012.

The four coaches for GSCC 2.0 are alumni from the first phase of the project: Rosemary Arca, Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, CA; Jason Evans, Prairie State College, Chicago, IL; Bronte Miller, Patrick Henry Community College, Martinsville, VA; Richard Pescarino, St. Louis Community College, St. Louis, MO. Rosemary and Jason teach English, and Bronte and Richard teach math.

Here’s a video of Bronte Miller talking about how GSCC helped her to look at her teaching practice in a new way.

Global Skills for College Completion invites you to experience your classroom in a whole new way – for improved student outcomes and better recognition of your work.

At GSCC we:

• Understand the challenges associated with remedial courses
• Help you to custom design a teaching approach that best suits your challenges, personality and skill set
• Empower you to connect with and learn from other developmental faculty.

For more information, contact Marisa Klages at mklages@lagcc.cuny.edu, or apply now.

Over the past two years, GSCC worked with 25 of the country’s most effective professors teaching remediation at community colleges across the country, gathering information about their classroom methods of success. Using innovative technology and a set of powerful digital tools created by GSCC, faculty examined and analyzed their personal teaching patterns. GSCC faculty also connected and worked with each other to create more engaging, inspiring and effective classrooms by testing and adapting new tactics that improve student outcomes. GSCC has analyzed its data to identify classroom practices most commonly used by great teachers and found that it’s not just what you teach, it’s how you teach it.

At a time when an educated workforce is more important than ever before, the time for a bold new look at college – particularly in remedial classrooms – is now. This generous grant from BMGF will enable GSCC to continue our important work with faculty across the country, using new tactics and technology to improve our nation’s graduation rates,” said Dr. Gail O. Mellow, President of LaGuardia Community College, Co-Principal Investigator GSCC.

The current award will allow GSCC to launch a second cohort of full time and adjunct faculty who teach remedial mathematics or English, to be recruited from community colleges across the country, as well as to refine GSCC’s innovative online tools. A call for the faculty participants will be issued in late January, 2012 for a fall semester launch.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation award will also fund the development of a business plan for an online Research & Development Network that will capitalize on the success of the GSCC. The Research & Development Network will be a linked system that can support and supplement research in developmental education by providing a ready set of faculty to explore and test activities, curriculum, online tools, etc., that are being developed by other projects—in real time in actual classrooms.

“Our paradigm-shifting methods help faculty re-examine their own practices, test and adapt methods most appropriate to their own challenges and connect with fellow educators for a largernetwork of support and ideas. This funding will allow GSCC to bring this innovative approach to community colleges across the country in order to bring better outcomes to the students who need it most,” said Dr. Diana D. Woolis, Founding Partner, Knowledge in the Public Interest, Co-Principal Investigator GSCC.

For information about Global Skills for College Completion, please contact Dr. Marisa Klages, Project Director, mklages@lagcc.cuny.edu , 718-482-5677.
••••

LaGuardia Community College located in Long Island City, Queens, was founded in 1971 as a bold experiment in opening the doors of higher education to all, and proudly carries forward that legacy today. LaGuardia educates students through over 50 degree, certificate and continuing education programs, providing an inspiring place for students to achieve their dreams. Upon graduation, LaGuardia students’ lives are transformed as family income increases 17%, and students transfer to four-year colleges at three times the national average. Part of the City University of New York (CUNY), LaGuardia is a nationally recognized leader among community colleges for its boundary-breaking success educating underserved students. At LaGuardia we imagine new ideas, create new curriculum and pioneer programs to make our community and our country stronger. http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/home/

Knowledge in the Public Interest, founded in 2001, designs conversations that are transforming education. Through innovative uses of social media, KPI fosters powerful online collaborations focusing on educational practice and policy. KPI brings together education leaders, researchers,
practitioners, and other experts throughJams—one‐day, synchronous, moderated online exchanges;eCommunities—structured, facilitated virtual working groups that achieve specific outcomes over set timeframes; and Networks**—ongoing interactions of diverse participants addressing issues of shared concern. http://www.kpublic.com/

Contact us if you are interested in joining the effort.

We warmly congratulate Bronte.

Faculty noted the benefit they gained from being a member of a community of practice comprised of colleagues from around the country and from networking with a wider group of developmental educators. They described how GSCC changed their teaching, particularly in the case of enhancing their assessment practices. For example, they learned to include more, short, low stakes assessments throughout the semester, rather than waiting until the end to find out if students have mastered skills.

A challenge, at least in the beginning, was to understand the process and the goals of the project, especially as these evolved organically as the semesters progressed. One survey respondent pinpointed the way GSCC is different from other professional development: “The hardest adjustment was to switch my thinking from ‘Am I teaching the right content/curriculum?’ to ‘How am I teaching the content?’ Everything else out there is curriculum/content focused. It took a long time to break me of that thinking.”

The survey asked for suggestions on what should be included for a future cohort. In response, faculty highlighted: sharing classroom practice, reflection, tagging with themes, the Pedagogy Circles, and peer review of work. Faculty found Pathfinder, the database of links to lessons and resources used in GSCC classrooms, to be a tool of growing value. Making efforts to ensure that GSCC is affordable for faculty who would like to take advantage of this new model ranked high. In particular, this would allow adjunct faculty, who do not have access to professional development funds, to be involved in the process.

In the end, both the results of the survey and the reflections in the Choice Event confirmed the success of GSCC.

Here are some quotes from faculty:

“Having all of these amazing colleagues all over the country to commiserate over the trials and tribulations of developmental education has been one of the most valuable parts of my GSCC experience.”

“Practice without assessment is empty. What GSCC did for me was help me refocus my attention on this part of the learning cycle…”

“[Pathfinder] gave me a brand new lesson I have never used before and is helping [me] get ideas for how to show more Caring and Tailored instruction, my primary themes to work on this semester…”

“[GSCC] was invigorating, thought provoking, reflective, encouraging, inspiring, challenging, tiring at times, but always promising for improved student achievement.”

Baseball has TONS of statistics kept every which way. What data elements can help refine our “seeing” pedagogical patterns so we can provide faculty improvement opportunities as precisely as Billy Bean did for the Oakland A’s?

Here are some examples of of how the GSCC faculty design team frame their appreciative-based coaching questions using themes and patterns to indicate strengths.

• What strengths did you see in the portfolio overall?
• Name these in terms of themes.
• Were these the same strengths that the featured faculty identified and tagged?
• Were these the ones that showed up in the preliminary patterns?

Suggested Readings
Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination (book)
By Jane Magruder Watkins and Bernard J. Mohr. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2001

A Coaching Journey from Resilience and Well-being to Flourishing (article)
By Jacqueline Binkert & Ann L. Clancy
Appreciative Coaching, 2009