College 005 has been a topic of conversation for ages. Even if we view it solely as an assessment tool, it's not very good. Maybe it's time we should ditch it and take the opportunity to more fully engage with first semester students and give them some valuable skills and raising the bar across the board.
For many of the students entering Mills, the whole business
of being away from home and transitioning from high school and community
colleges into a 4(plus) year institution is a challenge and this effects the rest of the curriculum and student experience. Students arrive at Mills with extremely varying levels of preparation in areas ranging from financial well being, time management, study skills, evaluation of
information, presentation of information, and use of technology.
Perhaps a collaborative effort that draws on student life, library, and faculty could define a set of transition skills that would include information related skills, technology skills, and study skills along with "life" skills. We could define an inventory of "baseline skills we expect and which are necessary for success" and then put together a really excellent program that would not be seen as a mere onerous requirement but would be appreciated as providing skills I need today.
The "course" could be taught in sections by a number of instructors allowing for smaller groups to rotate through the experience in a manner that was efficient (with regard to both faculty/staff time and student time) and effective. Examples of similar offerings by other institutions can be found here:http://fye.sdes.ucf.edu/?p=seminar and http://www.hartwick.edu/campus-life/first-year-experience
I like this idea. Perhaps we could have the course taught by the LLC advisors in order to better incorporate this idea into our current system.
ReplyDeleteThis could be a once per week course with minimal workload (for both the students and instructors) that is team-taught by the two advisors of each LLC. For example, several meetings could involve bringing in speakers from different areas of the campus: M center, library, DSL, financial aid, career services, etc. The LLC RAs could also be involved in the course somehow. We would have to agree on some sory of standardization across the LLCs (i.e. the list of topics to be covered).
Of course there would also have to be some sort of course release for the instructor to participate in this.
I also like this idea, of strengthening College 5 and expecting more from the students, but also making it more appealing.
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