Innovations Library

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Creative Inquiry and Undergraduate Research in the Community College
Lee Edwards May 2015
Volume: 18 Issue: 5
Count all 482
What does an employer want to see in a college graduate? The Chronicle of Higher Education and American Public Media's Marketplace conducted a survey in 2012 of 50,000 employers who hire recent college graduates to understand employer perceptions of the role of colleges and universities in career preparation.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Teaching Strategies, Innovations
Unpacking the Language of STEM for English Language Learners
Kristen Lems, Jason Stegemoller April 2015
Volume: 18 Issue: 4
Count all 463
This article is a follow-up to a workshop we presented at the League's 2013 STEMtech conference entitled Unpacking the Language of STEM for English Language Learners. We chose this topic because, in our roles as co-directors of the ESL STEM Success Grant (a five-year national professional development grant from the Office of English Language Acquisition, U.S. Department of Education), we have been exploring ways that teachers across grade levels can rise to the challenge of more effectively teaching English language learners (ELLs) in the STEM disciplines.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Teaching Strategies, Innovations
Improving Online Instruction: A Case Study
John Squires, Anita Polk-Conley March 2015
Volume: 18 Issue: 3
Count all 452
In fall 2009, the Chattanooga State Community College math department faced a problem not uncommon to colleges around the nation: Online course offerings had high failure rates and were not a quality experience for students. After examining the data, the department made a bold decision to put a moratorium on online math courses for two years. This move provided time to improve the quality and success of online courses.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Teaching Strategies, Innovations
Creating Stories From the Margins: A Cultural Anthology by and for Students
Lisa Shaw February 2015
Volume: 18 Issue: 2
Count all 458
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), educator Paolo Freire criticized the traditional classroom dynamic of student-teacher as "banking education," that is, the teacher "deposits" information to the student, who passively "banks" or stores it. He offers a list of teacher behaviors that ensure the status quo of teacher as subject and student as object: "The teacher thinks and the students are thought about. The teacher teaches and the students are taught" (p. 73).
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Teaching Strategies, Innovations
A Guide to Climate Resiliency & the Community College
Sarah White, Todd Cohen January 2015
Volume: 18 Issue: 1
Count all 455
Resiliency is the word of the hour, a potent but ill-defined term of art in climate and community development circles. At its most fundamental, resiliency indicates a community's ability to withstand a shock--economic, environmental, social. It encompasses a community's work to avert, prepare for, respond to, and recover from a disaster. It is invoked, most commonly, in the aftermath of droughts, storms, wildfire, or floods--the kinds of cataclysm that annually cost billions of dollars to the US economy and untold suffering to its citizens.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Teaching Strategies, Innovations
Making the Most of Advising and Planning Technologies: A Tool for Colleges
Melinda Mechur Karp December 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 12
Count all 453
There is a growing consensus across the country that college students need more support to help them reach their academic and career goals. Integrated Planning and Advising Service technologies (IPAS)--with their capacity to leverage big data and create more coherence and coordination among services--are increasingly viewed by colleges as an efficient means to address this challenge.
Tags: Student Services, Enrollment Services, Student Retention, Innovations
Assessing Affective Factors to Improve Retention and Completion
Ross Markle, Terry O'Banion November 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 11
Count all 457
Bloom’s Taxonomy may be the most recognized framework in all of education. Categorizing learning objectives into cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains appeared to be common sense at the time the construct was created, and the domains both thrived and evolved over decades with many applications and revisions.
Tags: Student Services, Teaching and Learning, Assessment and Evaluation, Student Completion, Student Retention, Innovations
Community College Voices in the National Completion Conversation
Participants in the League's 2014 Learning Summit October 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 10
Count all 460
Last summer, some 300 community college educators convened in Chandler, Arizona, to focus on learning. As participants in the League's Learning Summit, these faculty, staff, and administrators engaged in roundtable discussions about the current national emphasis on college completion--the Completion Agenda. Facilitated by League Vice President for Learning and Research, Cynthia Wilson, the groups discussed definitions of completion, issues and challenges surrounding completion, and the promise of the Completion Agenda, and they posed questions about the current emphasis on completion.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Learning Resources, Innovations
Digital Storytelling: Power to the People
Sandy Brown Jensen September 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 9
Count all 371
I am a writing instructor at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, who has fallen in love with digital storytelling. Definitions of digital storytelling vary, but in education the concept is that with the technology revolution, ordinary folks can tell their own real life stories. And while that doesn't automatically mean the stories are from the heart, overwhelmingly, that is the case.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Teaching Strategies, Innovations
Faculty Orientations Toward Instructional Reform
Susan Bickerstaff, Scaling Innovation Team August 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 8
Count all 383
Some of the most promising developmental education innovations require that instructors significantly change their classroom practice. For example, instructors may be asked to teach to a more heterogeneous group of students, prepare students for statistics rather than algebra, or attend more explicitly to students' nonacademic needs. Cultivating such behavioral change is difficult, and usually falls upon the leaders who are working to launch or scale a new approach. These leaders report that generating faculty buy-in is among the most challenging aspects of reform implementation.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Learning Resources, Innovations
Gap Advising: Maintaining a Presence in Common Areas of the College During the Semester
D. Brent Barnard July 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 7
Count all 385
Many who serve in higher education have heard inspirational stories of groundskeepers and maintenance personnel befriending students, thereby forming strong relationships which boost retention and encourage students to persist. Why do these employees succeed in an area so at odds with their job descriptions? They succeed because they care, andbecause they work in public areas among the students. The rest of the staff care as well, but spend less time in campus common areas.
Tags: Student Services, Enrollment Services, Student Retention, Innovations
Mobile Supports for Community College Students: Fostering Persistence Through Behavioral Nudges
Adrienne Maslin, Jill Frankfort, Margaret Jaques-Leslie June 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 6
Count all 461
Between juggling coursework, family, and 30 hours a week at a job, many community college students struggle with time and motivation. But for students at Middlesex Community College in Connecticut this semester, one solution for managing time and boosting motivation came from a source they frequently use already: their cell phones.
Tags: Student Services, Student Completion, Student Retention, Innovations
Professional Development and Its Future
Jon Mandrell May 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 5
Count all 457
With community colleges facing some of our most trying and challenging times, professional development continues to be the lifeblood of an institution. As resources and budgets become strained, many institutions understand that the path to innovation and advancement is based upon their willingness to train and develop their staff. This steadfast commitment to professional development ensures that an institution is forward-thinking and committed to its team, and recognizes how professional development benefits the most important individual: the student.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Learning Resources, Innovations
Active Learning Experiment Challenges Students
Velislava Karaivanova, Tammy Atchison April 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 4
Count all 461
Active learning, as opposed to traditional lecture-style teaching, has captured the attention of more educators as it challenges students to think independently, thus producing improved learning outcomes. Learning comes from various sources, including lectures, interactive media, cooperative learning, and kinesthetic learning. Cooperative learning is a powerful tool yielding better results (Karaivanova & Atchison, 2013). However, when a peer-teaching approach is applied, in which students present lecture material before the class, the challenge becomes how to motivate students.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Teaching Strategies, Innovations
Developmental Education: Relevant or Relic?
Pamela Lau March 2014
Volume: 17 Issue: 3
Count all 377
In recent times, community colleges have attracted unprecedented levels of public attention. The Obama administration has positioned community colleges to play a primary role in the nation's economic recovery and expansion. The president has envisioned two-year colleges as the vehicle to deliver job training programs that will impart skills to Americans enabling them to compete with workers from other nations. This vision is strategically tied to his bold pronouncement that our nation's community colleges will have five million more graduates by 2020.
Tags: Teaching and Learning, Programs and Disciplines, Innovations

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