The data tell us that American students are poorly prepared to compete in the knowledge-based economy. Our scores in science place us 17th among 34 developed countries, edged out by Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, and others. Knowing that our students rank “average” in science is hardly comforting in a knowledge economy where innovation and ingenuity are key drivers.The story is worse in mathematics. On those tests, our 15-year-olds scored below average among developed countries—25th among the 34 countries. The results are no better now than they were in 2003.....For example, the health care and education sectors of the economy—as well as the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields—will grow the fastest over the next eight years. Yet these are fields whose lifeblood is a steady supply of knowledge workers with postsecondary degrees. In health care, 2.8 million professional and technician positions will become available in the years ahead, and 95 percent of those jobs will require employees to have at least some college education. Similarly, the Georgetown Center expects the STEM sector to spin off 8.6 million new jobs by 2018, more than two-thirds of which will require workers with at least a bachelor's degree.To realize our “cradle-to-career” vision and achieve the President's 2020 goal, we must not only raise academic standards, dramatically improve teacher pre-professional and professional development, implement more rigorous evaluations of students and teachers, modernize our testing systems while reducing the time students spend taking tests to give them more time to learn, and dramatically engage far more parents in the education of their children. In concert with our pre-K-12 agenda, we must simultaneously re-engineer adult learning.The US Department of Education projects that about two-thirds of our nation's college completion goal will come from students who don't enter higher education directly from high school. Many will be adult learners who have had some college experience but never earned a certificate or a degree. Others will be the dropouts or the “stop-start-stop-start” students who realize their options will be limited without education beyond high school.We have to generate new college graduates from older students, career changers, students who enrolled in college and then left before attaining a degree, and the unemployed. We have to reach out to people who might never have considered higher education a few years ago.Far too many adults lack the basic literacy and numeracy skills to succeed in the knowledge economy: 93 million have literacy levels characterized as basic (meaning they have difficulty understanding a newspaper article well enough to answer simple questions about it) or below (National Assessment of Adult Literacy, 2002).We have a moral obligation and an economic imperative to educate these individuals. Adult education programs across the nation serve only 3 percent of the need. Our country cannot afford to have 40 percent of adults unprepared for America's middle-class jobs......For example, since today about 44.5 percent of all community college students are not prepared for general education or career-technical coursework, we need research on and dramatic improvement in remedial education. We need, and do not currently have, evidence-based, world-class models for remedial courses that bring students from basic to college-level literacy in a fixed amount of time. Transforming our pre-K-12 system, lowering the drop-out rate, and turning around our nation's lowest-performing schools will ultimately help our students and our colleges get out of most of the catch-up business. But for now, we must perfect the science of catching up for those students who need this help.
The primary reason many students do not succeed in the [traditional math] course is that they do not actually do the problems. As a population, they generally do not spend enough time with the material, and this is why they fail at a very high rate....One of our most persistent learning problems is the dismal record of student performance in developmental and college-level mathematics at our two- and four-year institutions. But we now know how to improve learning outcomes and student success rates in math at a lower cost than that of traditional instruction—and we can prove it. While not effortless, the solution is as close to a silver bullet as one can get in the complex world of teaching and learning.Course redesign is the process of re-conceiving whole courses (rather than individual classes or sections) to achieve better learning outcomes at a lower cost by taking advantage of the capabilities of information technology. NCAT has 11 years of experience in conducting large-scale redesign projects in mathematics that do just that. Thirty-seven institutions have been involved, and most have redesigned more than one course either during the project period or afterwards. Collectively, NCAT math redesigns have affected more than 200,000 students to date.Course redesign is not about putting courses online. It is about rethinking the way we deliver instruction, especially large-enrollment core courses, in light of the possibilities that technology offers.Redesigns in mathematics at NCAT partner institutions have: increased the percentage of students successfully completing a developmental math course by 51 percent on average (ranging from 10 to 135 percent) while reducing the cost of instruction by 30 percent on average (from 12 to 52 percent), and increased the percentage of students successfully completing a college-level math course by 25 percent on average (from 7 to 63 percent) while reducing the cost of instruction by 37 percent on average (from 15 to 77 percent)....Core Principles: Why Is the Emporium Model So Successful?The emporium model has been successful for four reasons: Students spend the bulk of their course time doing math problems rather than listening to someone talk about doing them....Students spend more time on things they don't understand and less time on things they have already mastered....Students get assistance when they encounter problems....Students are required to do math....SIX MODELS FOR COURSE REDESIGN Supplemental: Add to the current structure and/or change the content Replacement: Blend face-to-face with online activities Emporium: Move all classes to a lab setting Fully Online: Conduct all (or most) learning activities online Buffet: Mix and match according to student preferences Linked Workshop: Replace developmental courses with just-in-time workshops http://www.theNCAT.o...R_ModCrsRed.htmFIVE PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESSFUL COURSE REDESIGN Redesign the whole course. Encourage active learning. Provide students with individualized assistance. Build in ongoing assessment and prompt (automated) feedback. Ensure sufficient time on task and monitor student progress. http://www.theNCAT.o.../R2R_PrinCR.htm
Сообщение отредактировал frim_ax: 22.12.2012 - 02:20