FIN Commons

San Diego Mesa College

At San Diego Mesa College, a team comprising English faculty, a counselor, and an institutional researcher is investigating a key question in basic skills: What keeps students more engaged in critical inquiry? The team has a hunch that student motivation in basic skills English classes will increase if they have the opportunity to make their writing public, so that their work takes on a significance beyond the classroom’s confines. As part of a basic writing-reading/writing-learning community, students will make videos of their homes and communities (like the TV show Cribs), expressing where students come from and how they got to where they are. When presented to the class, the videos will prompt questions that will be answered through writing and research. The Faculty Inquiry team will study the impact of this project on students’ motivation and sense of ownership over their own writing.

Plans for Data Collection and Analysis

A. Zoom-Lens Inquiry: Focusing on Students

1) What data will you gather and analyze on individual students? (e.g. student work, self-reflections, interviews, videotaped think-alouds or problem-solving)

Student work, self-reflections (such as writer’s notebook entries and cover letters for essays), writing portfolios, videotaped interviews with and between students, videotaped classroom interaction, demographics, retention, persistence, and success rates.

Students will meet with the counselor, Cynthia Rico-Bravo to complete an educational plan. They will also speak about their educational goals and plan out those necessary courses for the coming semesters. They will also send an online questionnaire measuring the students’ level of engagement in student services.

2) How do you imagine this data will help you understand the problem/issue you’re investigating? In other words, how does the data connect to and inform the overall focus of your inquiry?

We hope to further understand what engages students (e.g. what motivates them to be active instead of passive, to collaborate to reach mutual goals, to be personally invested in work that is meaningful to them). Our assumption is that engaged students are more likely to persist, take advantage of student services, feel like they “belong” in academia, strive for community with others, and take an active role in finding courses that suit them. We also hope to find that once the students meet with the counselor, they will have a clear idea of how their basic skills reading and writing courses are necessary for them to attain their educational goals.

3) When and how will you collect this data? (e.g. Which classes will you target? Where will you conduct interviews or think-alouds?)

· Our target class is a developmental reading/writing learning community (one level below transfer). Tracey Walker teaches the reading course; Wendy Smith teaches the writing course.

· Anthony Lattner and Chris Ward conduct ongoing interviews with students in the cohort.

· Cynthia Rico-Bravo is taking notes on student contact in general (without breaking confidentiality) to assist them on meeting their educational goals and student services might assist them in their educational goals.

· We’ve made a request for data from our campus researcher, Susan Mun, who will be following our students for the next year. We meet with Susan once per week.

· We have Friday team meetings during which we journal-write and compare notes.

4) When will you analyze this data? (e.g. mid-semester team retreat, after lesson-study session, at the end of the semester; )

Analysis is ongoing, and a video documenting our work is in progress. We hope to have some visible and sharable results at the end of the semester. We won’t have final results for a year.

5) How will you analyze the data? (e.g. analyzing student work with a rubric or analytic frame like Polya’s method for problem-solving or Perry’s scheme for student development; analyzing themes in student self-reflections according to their performance in the class – how did the responses of students who did not pass compare/contrast with students who performed well?)

We are analyzing work with rubrics co-developed by students, analyzing themes in student work (they are also analyzing each others’ writing, photos, and videos). We will also be analyzing data with the help of our researcher, Susan Mun. We will focus on how visuals and technology encourage critical thinking and measure student response. We will utilize the role of reflection and metacognition to gauge whether students are meeting these learning outcomes and how they process/learn. In addition, we will investigate questions such as 1) How do we recognize engagement? 2) How do we measure it? 3) What does it look like and how does it evolve over the course of the semester?

6) What questions/concerns do you have about this element of your Inquiry? How can your Inquiry Coach support you in this phase of your Inquiry?

At this point we are gathering data and believe questions will emerge when we review what we have. “What does the data reveal?” will probably be our question in the coming months.

B. Mid-Range Shots: Focusing on the Classroom

1) Please name ONE specific lesson in a particular course that will give you a good vantage point for observing student learning relevant to your Inquiry.

Cribs Analysis

2) How do you imagine the Lesson Study will help you understand the problem/issue you’re investigating about students and their learning? In other words, how does it connect to and inform the overall focus of your inquiry?

Students will learn to read an image/film as text considering argument(s), support, implications, and questions for inquiry. We hope it will measure whether students are engaged and to what extent they can analyze images verbally and in writing.

3) When and how will your team conduct this Lesson Study? Please detail the timeframes and participants for the three parts of the Lesson Study process (collaboratively planning the lesson, teaching/observing the lesson, and debriefing/analyzing videotapes & student work from the lesson).

Tracey and Wendy have already planned the lesson and created written handouts and an observation rubric. Tony Lattner and Cynthia Rico-Bravo will observe both classes on Tuesday, February 24 and Thursday, February 26. The team will begin to analyze the written and oral responses at their Friday meetings.

4) What kinds of things will the observers be looking/listening for during the lesson? What artifacts of student learning and student experience will the team collect during the lesson? Will you videotape any portion of this process (pre-planning, lesson, debrief)?

The observers will be looking for evidence of engagement, critical thinking, ability to analyze, and class involvement. The observers will be listening to the quality and number of questions asked, the quality of student responses/commentary, willingness to share personal writing, and analysis of visual texts. We will collect written responses from students and observers.

5) What questions/concerns do you have about this element of your Inquiry? How can your Inquiry Coach support you in this phase of your Inquiry?

We think questions will emerge when we begin to analyze the data we’ve gathered.

C. Wide-Angle Lens: Focusing on Larger Trends in Institutional Data

1) What data from your Institutional Research Office will you integrate into your Inquiry? For example, will you look at patterns of student success, defined as grades of CR, A,B C? Retention rates (completion of semester without withdrawl)? Persistence from one semester to the next, or from one course to the next in a sequence? Comparisons of student outcomes disaggregated by race/ethnicity, gender, age? Data from surveys on student engagement? For a sample Inquiry using this kind of data, go to http://facultyinquiry.net and look for the category “Using Institutional Research,” then see the Learning Community Impact study posted there.)

Demographic profiles, retention, success, and persistence to the next English course in the sequence within a two-year period will be compiled for the following groups:

· Students who place in English reading and writing courses one level below transfer (demographic profiles only)

· Students who enroll in English reading and writing courses one level below transfer

· Students who enroll in an English reading and writing learning community one level below transfer

· Students enrolled in the FIN English reading and writing learning community one level below transfer

2) How do you imagine this data will help you understand the problem/issue you’re investigating? In other words, how does the data connect to and inform the overall focus of your inquiry?

Our central question asks, How can we increase student engagement in critical inquiry? We would also like to see whether this engagement aids students in achieving these indicators of student performance, including retention, success, and persistence to next-level English course, and whether they will be unable to achieve the goals of degree attainment and/or transfer. Thus, our goal is two-fold: to promote student engagement in critical inquiry and to help students achieve their ultimate educational goals. Our SLOs will demonstrate student learning, while the retention, success, and persistence data will indicate whether students are achieving performance outcomes necessary for the attainment of their larger educational goals.

3) What questions/concerns do you have about this element of your Inquiry? How can your Inquiry Coach support you in this phase of your Inquiry?

We’re not sure at this point.

D. Video Footage

We are asking each team to collect at least 10 hours of video footage in the Spring semester.

1) Beyond plans detailed above, please describe any additional footage you intend to gather.

We’re currently filming class discussions, interviews between us and students, interviews between students and each other, interviews between students and faculty, and students’ own footage of their homes and communities.

2) How will this footage inform the central questions of your Inquiry?

We hope to learn more about students’ lives and academic concerns. We also hope that the use of technology and visual texts will activate the knowledge students already have and help them better understand critical inquiry.

3) What questions/concerns do you have about this element of your Inquiry? Is there any support you’d like from the FIN Leadership Team in this area?

Chris Ward, a student co-inquirer with filmmaking experience, will help us to “make visible” the work we’ve done this semester.

E. Inclusion of Student Voices

As noted during the Kick-Off Convening, an additional $1,000 will be made available to each team to support making student voices a central part of each Inquiry. We encourage you to be creative and draw upon students as co-inquirers who can provide expertise in helping you understand the problem/issue you are investigating. Please describe how you plan to include student voices in your Inquiry (e.g. hiring students to capture video footage, interview other students, review data from your inquiry and tell you what they see).

Timeline/Calendar

So that we can visualize how the work will proceed over the next several months, please give a timeline for when the above components will occur. It can be in either calendar or outline format.

February: Gather data from Lesson Study.

March/April: Begin “Cribs” videos and writing follow-up.

May: Begin to organize data; collect clips; make “making visible” film.

June: Complete film and other materials for “making visible.”