Learning is Not a Spectator Sport! COL 105 Freshman Seminar: Learning is Not a Spectator Sport!

What is one quality successful college students share? Snowball What is one quality successful college students share? In front of you, you will find, some paper and pens. On a piece of paper, we’d like you to answer this question: What is one quality successful college students share? Once everybody has written his/her response down… “Please ball up your piece of paper and gently lob it across the room to someone else like so (model). *Make sure everyone gets a ball* We’d like you now to open the snowball you’ve caught, and one by one, stand up read aloud what’s written there. Once everyone has read…These are precisely the qualities we hope to instill in our first-time post-secondary students through the implementation of Freshman Seminar. Photo courtesy of alamy.com

Successful Students Accept Personal Responsibility Discover Self-motivation Master Self-management Employ Interdependence Most of the qualities mentioned during the snowball activity fall into one of the following 8 categories, which are the focus of Freshman Seminar text, OnCourse by Skip Downing. * I think maybe at this point, we should even provide the handout that goes through successful students…struggling students…* Photo courtesy of Houghton Mifflin

Successful Students Gain Self-Awareness Adopt Lifelong Learning Develop Emotional Intelligence Believe in Themselves Now, I know some of you may be skeptical, and if not skeptical, at least curious about whether or not we can achieve such a seemingly lofty goal…but we’ve got proof it can work!

Improvement Rates for On Course Mount Hood Community College Retention of All First-Year Students NOT in On Course Retention of All First-Year Students in On Course Improvement Rate Fall 2004 to Spring 2005 53% 80% +27% Fall 2004 to Fall 2005 28% 54% +26% AS you can see, this chart illustrates the success one college, Mount Hood Community College had using the OnCourse text and philosophy with first-year students. In one semester, there improvement rate for student retention was 27%, and for an entire academic year, retention increased 26%.

Improvement Rates for On Course Baltimore City Community College English 101 Pass Rate for Non-Learning Community Students English 101 Pass Rate for Learning Community Students (Using On Course text) Improvement Rate Fall 2000 40% 74% +33%

Improvement Rates for On Course Baltimore City Community College Developmental English Pass Rate for Non-Learning Community Students Developmental English Pass Rate for Learning Community Students (Using On Course text) Improvement Rate Fall 2000 to Spring 2001 63% 76% +13% Baltimore City Community College also used OnCourse in their Developmental English classes, which we too will be doing. As you can see, their student pass rate in one semester increased 13%.

Improvement Rates for On Course Baltimore City Community College Developmental Math Pass Rate for Non-Learning Community Students Developmental Math Pass Rate for Learning Community Students (Using On Course text) Improvement Rate Fall 2000 to Spring 2001 69% 90% +21%

How? Provide a structured learning experience Provide specific and measurable knowledge, skills, behaviors, and values Provide deeper, transferable learning

Design Grids Active Learning Techniques Structures and Strategies Learning Styles One technique in particular FS faculty will be employing is the use of design grids in creating lessons. Design grids allow teacher to cerate lessons that appeal to all student learning styles, reinforcing messages through a variety of active learning structures and styles (i.e. the snowball) to deepen learning.

Learning Outcomes Puzzling it out… Katy Photo courtesy of alamy.com

Learning Outcome 1 At the completion of this course, you will be able to apply critical thinking skills and present well-reasoned arguments to form a methodology for completing classroom assignments and making personal decisions. click through as participants read aloud learning outcomes from puzzles.

Learning Outcome 2 At the completion of this course, you will be able to integrate principles of learning styles and study strategies with personal time and stress management techniques to form a learning profile for being a self-directed learner in various educational contexts.

Learning Outcome 3 At the completion of this course, you will be able to develop a personal education plan and describe strategies for continually revising that plan in order to achieve long-range educational goals.

Learning Outcome 4 At the completion of this course, you will be able to display engagement with the campus community by actively participating in events/organizations and by establishing respectful, working relationships with fellow students, faculty, and staff to build a social support network.

Learning Communities ENG 032 COL 105 MAT 032 ENG 101 COL 105 SOC 101 Freshman seminar is the hub course for our learning communities. There will be three different learning communities: Eng 032/Mat 032, Soc 101/eng 101, and Bio 100/Chm100. The course in each learning community will be connected with 3-4 points of intersection, reinforcing concepts taught in COL 105 and the content courses. For example, a concept taught in FS, like Personal Responsibility, could be reinforced in ENG 032 as students are taught about academic honesty and simultaneously reinforced in MAT 032 as students learn about financial responsibility. The goal is for knowledge to be reinforced throughout the community to deepen student learning. Faculty in each learning community will learn a variety of active learning structures and strategies to help them make content linkages and provide more meaningful learning experiences. BIO 100 COL 105 CHM 100

COL 105: Capstone Project The Freshman Seminar Capstone Project: My Learning Profile Components: Learning Styles What’s my learning style? How do I adapt my learning style to mesh with different instructor learning styles? What study techniques/skills best help you learn?

COL 105: Capstone Project Educational Plan: What are your short-term goals and how do you plan to achieve them? What are your mid-range goals and how do you plan to achieve them? What are your long-term goals and how do you plan to achieve them? How do you deal with obstacles to achieving your goals? A second part of the capstone project calls for students to create an educational plan. They will be asked to create short-term goals (like “make the president’s list next semester”), mid-range goals (“like declare a major within the next academic year), and long-term goals (like “transfer to Clemson University”). Students will also be asked to apply what they’ve learned in COL 105 to explain how they will deal with obstacles to achieving their goals. What, for example, will they do if Clemson doesn’t accept them into the program they’ve chosen?

COL 105: Capstone Project Working Relationships /Campus Engagement: 360 Evaluation: 6 pieces (pre and post) How well do you think you interact with others? How well do your peers think you interact with them? How well do your faculty/advisor think you interact with them? Choose a picture that you think illustrates your level of engagement in the campus community. Explain how this picture illustrates your community involvement.

Will it work? (Katy and Jenn’s experiences) When Katy and I were first told the college was shipping us off to a convent for 4 days, we were…a little skeptical ourselves about what we would gain from the experience. We feared being asked to join some creepy educational cult. We promised each other not to drink any kool-aid. And as you can see from the photo, we prepared dfor the worse by smuggling in our own DVD player and popcorn to combat any would-be weirdness (not to mention the deafening silence). But, as we began to experience the OnCourse philosophy ourselves, we started to see how this might work. And when we returned to the normalcy of our own college campus, leaving the nuns behind, we applied our newly discovered arsenal of techniques to our own content courses and found that there really was something to this whole OnCourse thing. Examples from Katy. Examples from Jenn: success teams, team-building,

A Taste of On Course! Who is this for: LEI faculty and any other interested faculty When is it: June 13 from 12-2 Who do you contact: Margaret Burdette What will we do: Spaghetti and Marshmallows Katy

Thank you! Freshman Seminar Subgroup: LouAnn Martin, Sarah Shumpert, Jeremy King, Amoena Norcross, and Marianne Albert Jenn: Thanks!

Questions? Any questions??