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Randolph Hollingsworth's observations on her part in the War on Attrition - discovering and discussing this means at the University of Kentucky.  If you have a UK account, please sign in (see top right hand corner of the page) in order to add your comments.

6/30/2009

e-literacy issues and KY high school kids going to college?
While developmental educators talk with each other in streams of consciousness about "students today," and try desparately to remain relevant to Kentucky legislators, there often shows up an intriguing narrative that is outside the usual crowd of Kentucky educators.  Take a look at this interesting article from a literature prof in New Jersey.
 
To whet your appetite, I snag a few words from her essay:  "At New Jersey City University (NJCU), in Jersey City, New Jersey,incoming freshmen (a little over 500 full-time admitted in Fall 2008) who need remedial courses is a phenomenon that faculty are all too familiar with. Many are children of immigrants. Most have parents who never graduated from college. All aspire to be middle class. They know that a high school diploma is no longer the ticket to social mobility in the U.S.; the manufacturing economy that once easily absorbed such students and allowed them to support a family has all but disappeared in the past decades. The question is: What does this have to do with teaching literature and human nature in the freshmen writing courses? The answer is: Everything."  Read it - let me know what you think... and I'll pass it along to the crowd in Frankfort. 
 
Posted at 6:46 PM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: June 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/22/2009

GI Bill - good for the overall attitude about higher ed but racial and gender discrimination continued

If you haven't seen Altschuler and Blumin's new book, The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans, take a look.  They took a hard look at the post-WWII law's impact on race and gender, and in an interview featured in "Inside Higher Ed" (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/22/gibill), they don't pull any punches:

 

"With the passage of the [original GI} bill, the outlook for women in higher education grew dimmer. GI Janes constituted only about 2 percent of World War II military personnel. Specific provisions of the bill, moreover, put women at a disadvantage. Unlike men, women veterans did not receive a living allowance for a dependent spouse while they were in school. And the nine-year limitation on benefits fell disproportionately on women, who tended to delay their own plans in deference to those of their husbands – or to have kids. It is also the case that “the ideology of domestic containment,” which included occupational segregation, wage differentials, glass ceilings, and hiring restrictions for high status jobs, meant that the higher education benefit had a less significant socio-economic impact on women than men."    

 

This lesson is something for all of us to think about given that the new, post-9/11 GI Bill goes into effect in August.  UK is joining the list of Yellow Ribbon Program (http://www.gibill.va.gov/GI_BILL_Info/CH33/YRP/YRP_List.htm), but are we here at UK ready to address the needs of the veterans of today's wars?  In particular, are we ready to address the specific needs of our GI Janes - especially now that we know more about the vastness of unrecorded rapes many experienced while in uniform?

 

Has the University asked current veterans on our campus if their needs are being met?  See for example, the Minnesota survey on the mental and physical health of their vets (http://www.bhs.umn.edu/healthdata/report/Veterans_CSHSReport_08.pdf)

 

We'll be following these issues as we move forward in our retention and graduation efforts.

Posted at 2:31 PM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: June 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/29/2009

Report on Fall08-to-Spr09 Non-registrants Communication Campaign

With input and support from many individuals across the University, we have crafted a report to describe the monumental work undertaken by the college academic advisors who reached out to all those who did not priority register in November 2008.  In addition, the Office of Institutional Research helped us to craft the subsequent survey sent in January 2009 to reach out and ask those who did not return if we could have done something more - the report shows the results of that effort as well.  Through the tremendous support from Sheila Vinton, our graduate research assistant here in the Office of Undergraduate Education, we provide you with a story of this University-wide effort to reach out to our students falling through those legendary cracks in the system. 

 

You can download the report here.

 

It humbled us here in the Office of Undergraduate Education to see the good will and generous spirit of those who went above and beyond the usual day-to-day efforts (already at maximum capacity) to explore what causes attrition at the University of Kentucky and how we might better communicate with those who might drop out.

 

Please accept my grateful thanks to all who contributed to this report.  It is our hope that UK faculty and staff find it useful in understanding the larger issues surrounding the need for improving UK retention rates and in finding new and strategic ways to continue moving forward in these efforts.

Posted at 3:26 PM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: May 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/11/2009

KY Adult Learner Initiative - Report on UK's status
As part of the Kentucky Adult Learner Initiative launched by the KY Council on Postsecondary Education, the Provost assigned a task force to study the status of adult learners at the University of Kentucky and whether the University of Kentucky is an “adult friendly” campus.  Led by Randolph Hollingsworth and ably organized by Terri Runyon, the task force used the Adult Learning Focused Institution (ALFI) Toolkit from the Council on Adult & Experiential Education (www.cael.org/alfi/tools.html) to support the development of a report.  In addition, the task force gathered other data from: a telephone survey for those UK undergrads aged 25 and older who had left before graduating; discussion groups with selected students and faculty; and, a student support staff survey.
 
The task force presented (in no particular order of priority) the following recommendations to the Provost for improving recruitment and retention of adult learners as well as developing an institutional plan to submit to the CPE for additional funding.

 

·         Offer more evening/weekend, summer, independent student and distance learning content – both individual courses that faculty want to offer and those specifically targeted by departments to allow students to complete full programs in the sequence they need;

·         Improve the recruitment and enrollment process for adult students;

·         Create a leave of absence category for undergraduate students;

·         Assess regularly the effectiveness of adult student services and track enrollment/retention/graduation; and

·         Provide additional, centralized resources for the Project Graduate initiative.

 
Attached here is a copy of the report with the results of those findings and the fuller set of recommendations to the Provost.
Posted at 8:42 AM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: May 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/30/2009

UK's new law dean founded and edits a professional blog
Check it out: the new Dean of the UK College of Law, David A. Brennen. Brennen is joining the University of Kentucky from the University of Georgia School of Law where he has been a professor since 2006 and from the Association of American Law Schools where he is completing a two year term as deputy director.

Along with more than 15 years of experience in the classroom, Brennen is regarded as an innovator in the field of nonprofit law.  He is a co-founder and co-editor of Nonprofit Law Prof Blog. 

Together with the College of Design dean, Michael Speaks, (he is using NetworkBlue for his regular blog for students to see), it looks like UK's academic leadership is taking on a whole new generation!

Posted at 12:26 PM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: April 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/17/2009

Drop downs? Reverse Transfers? Swirling Enrollments?

Sara Goldrick-Rab, UW-Madison, has reported in this month's Sociology of Education on college transfer students using the latest numbers from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (students who graduated from high school in 1992 are followed through 2000).  She found that first-generation charactistics were even more telling than socio-economic when understanding why a college student -- enrolled first at a 4-year institution -- would transfer to a community college and then drop out.  Goldrick-Rab says she was surprised to find that money was not the key issue for this cohort and she recommends that 4-year institutions offer advising for those students who.  Check out the summary of her report (and the intriguing comments) at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/17/transfer  

Interestingly, academic advisors and faculty have been saying to our at-risk students for years to "reverse" transfer to LTI- LCC-BCTC-whatever... but we have no idea if this is good advising.  Are we saying to our students that they need to "drop down" in the hopes that they don't "drop out"? Are we promoting the "swirling" enrollments that every support staff member dreads?  The latest statistics on transfers into UK are not good on this possibility.  This kind of advising is endemic, however.  How can we raise the faculty and staff's awareness of this problem? 

Posted at 1:34 PM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: April 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/10/2009

DSP110 and Second Life ethnographies - blast from the past
Talking with people today in the Drop-Into-Second-Life session today, I started talking about the wonderful experience last semester with my Discovery Seminar students in Second Life.  I learned so much from them, and I hope that they know it.  Several faculty and staff worked with me to come up with the ideas in the course and we thought so hard about the syllabus - measuring out each class period as if we had control over what was going to happen.  Well, somehow the syllabus worked, and yet the experience itself was so much richer than we had ever imagined.  I highly recommend you trying it out yourself - get lots of supporters around you as you go.
Posted at 4:37 PM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: April 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/6/2009

University of KY Second Life Drop-In Info Session on Friday, April 10th

So what is Second Life? Have you heard of it but you're not sure how it can be used for education?

 

Please come to a drop-in information session held in room B-35 in Young Library, University of Kentucky.  Stop in any time on April 10 between 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM.  Members of the UK community who are active in Second Life will be available for questions and demonstration throughout the day. 

 

Tour the University of Kentucky island in Second Life!  Feeling adventurous?  Sign-up for an account on the spot and try your hand at navigating the virtual world.

 

See http://ukisland.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/april-10-sl-session-on-campus/ for more information and directions.

Posted at 5:15 PM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: April 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/24/2009

Where are you on the Transformation Continuum?
Jim Vanides, who handles HP Innovations in Education Grants, has recently shared his keynote speech on what he has learned about emerging innovations in teaching with technology in higher education.  You can find it online - a short voice-over vodcast presentation or a .pdf of the presentation.
 
He talks about the "Generation 2020 - the 12 year olds today who by 2020 could be working at a high tech company like HP... or an under/un-employed young adult who uses technology to support their own small business. 
 
He wonders if we have given our professors a portfolio to redesign the learner experience in our classes...  where "teaching, learning and technology intersect" and learning becomes:
  • Engaging – enhances learning outcomes through self-directed, project-based, experiential curricula
  • Personal – customizes lessons to the unique needs and capabilities of the individual student
  • Collaborative – taps the youth penchant for teaming to create interactive and richer learning experiences
  • Connected – extends reach of teaching talent and access to high quality resources
  • Anywhere – supports distance learning to bridge geographic divides
  • Anytime – enables 24x7 learning to reach those balancing work and study

Here's what he learned from the grantees' results:

  1. The bottom line / punch line: when you combine exemplary teaching with the right technologies to create a new learning experience that would not have been possible otherwise, that’s when then magic happens – and student achievement increases.
  2. If you simply add technology to a classroom with no intent to change instructional practices, or where the instructional practices are not optimal (lecturing, for example), then you don’t get the intended effect
  3. If you take the best instructors but don’t equip them, then there is only so far they can go to create rich learning experiences for their students

So where are you on Vanides' "transformation continuum"?  It starts with "I lecture, you listen," moves up to "I talk AND show, and you listen AND watch/transcribe" (also known as Death by Powerpoint), upward from there to students as creators (not just consumers) of knowledge... and on.  Take a look at his presentation of a framework of a transformation continuum - both transformation in teaching and transformation of learning.

Posted at 5:21 PM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: March 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/5/2009

Data-sharing to overlay real space in the classroom and in the hallways - who will design it?
What do you think of using mobile technologies for educational and other student engagement purposes here at UK?  Can we really do it?  Do we have the infrastructure in our network - room in our department budgets - or the culture to design strategies for its use by faculty and staff?  UKIT offers UK Mobile as an optional way to communicate with/among students via phone text messaging - and the Emergency Management folks have their Early Alert... Definitely, use of mobile technologies to access and contribute to NetworkBlue will be critical to its success.
 
Check out what 2 Stanford U students developed (via their company, Terribly Clever Design) and implemented for free - a Mobile Web Client that lets students access their university email, contacts, calendar, class schedules, registration and more.  Duke University has adapted this application suite for their DukeMobile initiative.  There are more mobile applications initiatives around: University of Cincinnati, University of Maryland-Eastern Shore,  as well the now-famous Abilene Christian University which was the first to distribute free iPhones to their incoming freshman class in order to launch their mobile connection initiative.  (NOTE: there is a combination of staff and faculty who lead this effort at ACU - housed within the teaching and learning center - and it is an English professor who is the Director of Mobile Learning Research).  For more see also the Chronicle's Wired Campus series on Mobile College Apps.
 
I'm sure we can roll something out similar here that combines various support services (including the library) and engagement activities (e.g., using NetworkBlue during summer conferences for the incoming freshmen).  My question is:  Are UK faculty ready to design the strategies - and research the effectiveness - of use of mobile technologies in the classroom?
Posted at 9:59 AM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: March 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)
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