Print version
George Kuh, a scholar of higher education known best for his work on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), is visiting Texas A&M on Wednesday, October 3, hosted by the Office of the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies in association with the Office of the Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost, Center for Teaching Excellence and the Office of Institutional Assessment. There are workshops all day, and a talk ?on ?High Impact Practices and Measuring Effectiveness??in the morning. You can find out more and register at??https://ers.tamu.edu.
As a result of his work on student engagement and learning, Kuh is a proponent of high-impact practices like writing- or speaking-intensive courses. His research shows that student success and persistence is linked to a balance between challenging students academically and?providing adequate support to help them meet this challenge [Thomas F. Nelson?Laird, Daniel Chen,?George D. Kuh,"Classroom Practices At Institutions With Higher-Than-Expected Persistence Rates: What Student Engagement Data Tell Us"?New Directions For Teaching & Learning?2008.115 (2008): 85-99, p 96].
One of Kuh?s recommendation is to show first-year students how to use institutional resources such as tutoring?yes, the University Writing Center. According to his research, nine out of ten first-year students report an intention to use academic assistance resources, but that by the end of the year, only about half with this intention have acted on it.
As a faculty member, you have a great deal of influence on teaching your students to use the writing center: Kuh et al. found that students will do what we ask academically. For example, if we require more writing, reading, or public speaking, students do more. But our influence goes further: ??faculty can and do shape student performance by what they themselves value and do? [Kuh, George D.,?Thomas F.?Nelson Laird, and Paul D.Umbach "Aligning Faculty Activities & Student Behavior"?Liberal Education?90.4 (2004): 24-31, p. 30]. As writers and speakers ourselves, we know that getting feedback is?not a punishment for poor work or a band-aid for unprepared writers or speakers. It is a practice employed by every composer, even good ones. ?The University Writing Center provides feedback from 9 am to 10 pm ?four days a week, from 9 m to 4 pm on Fridays, and from?5 -10 pm on Sundays. (See my last blog post for some details on how to refer students to the writing center and why you should.)
Kuh further recommends having tutoring services available where student live. Unfortunately, relocating the UWC to the dorms is not going to happen. It?s not manageable, and from what I hear, it frequently results in paying tutors to sit around and do nothing except right before papers are due, when they are overrun with desperate students. However, the UWC has instituted online consultations, and they are proving to be quite popular. Currently, they are asynchronous, meaning students can send in their work, and one of our consultants spends up to 45 minutes to make an assessment and give advice. We plan, within a year, to convert to synchronous online conferencing, which would allow us to tutor in real time over the internet. Our intention is to make the consultations available at the writing center more accessible to students, while at the same time preserving the valuable interaction that occurs when peers come face-to-face.
I hope you?ll get a chance to hear and come face-to-face with Dr. Kuh this semester. You?ll be even more engaged with your teaching, I?m sure.
?
?
Leave a Response
Source: http://writingcenter.tamu.edu/2012/stand-and-deliver/george-kuhs-visit-and-writing-centers/
atomic clock daylight savings time john mccain game changer selection sunday corned beef recipe time change
No comments:
Post a Comment