Co-Presenters: Melanie Borrego, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, School of Arts and Sciences, Brandman University and Michelle Rosensitto, Ed.D., Director of the Online Writing Community, Brandman University
Rethinking Writing Remediation for First-Year Students
The National Conference of State Legislatures indicates in its 2011 report “Reforming Remedial Education,” that 34% of all U.S. public college and university students require remediation. According to the Connecticut Board of Regents for Higher Education, “[o]nly 13.6 percent of full-time, degree-seeking students who took a remedial class in 2005 earned an associate degree within four years.” In the same report, Davis Jenkins, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University claims that “research shows that students who just miss placing out of remedial classes do equally well when they skip remediation and go straight to college classes.”
At the same time, Complete College Texas’ 2013 report argues that “improving remediation outcomes cannot come at the expense of access to higher education….Universal access to the opportunity to build a better life is not online a societal value; it’s an economic imperative.” Using a co-requisite model allows programs to maintain access, limit cost, and decrease time to degree, particularly for at-risk students. In order for this social value and economic imperative to be realized, though, students have to learn. Does this model help students learn the skills they need to be successful?
Brandman University (a part of the Chapman University system) is a not-for-profit private university which runs accelerated eight-week sessions on twenty-six campuses in California and Washington states. It is primarily focused on adult learners, and traditionally has not offered remedial courses. The faculty has devised a network of support for students who might traditionally place one level below first-year composition so that a separate remediation course is not required. Students take an admissions exam, write a diagnostic essay, and are supported by professional tutors in the Online Writing Community. Working in concert with instructors, professional and peer tutors help monitor successful student completion of any required tutorials, assist the student in applying the new skills to their own work, and communicate with their assigned instructor(s) to report student progress.
In this presentation, we will present an update of Brandman University’s progress using this model, including the data we have gathered. In addition, we hope to address the wider issues of remedial writing courses in terms of cost, time, and degree completion. We intend this to be a conversation which presents what we are doing but also about what other schools are doing, a time to exchange ideas and connect with other educators concerned about how best to support students.
Prezi: http://prezi.com/uykf_cscdbew/rethinking-writing-remediation/
Melanie Borrego, Ph.D. 