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Sacramento/Central Valley Network Inaugural Regional Meeting May 18, 2009

What Would You Like to See in the Network?

Answers from Participants of SCVN Inaugural Regional Meeting • Podcasting

• Show everyone on campus how everyone benefits from getting involved with BSI/helping students

succeed

• Campus-based workshops

• Mutually developed SLO’s by counselors and instructors

• Workshops at a variety of times (e.g., evenings and weekends)

• Invite students and tutors to participate in workshops

• How can what we do in the classroom change?

• Faculty retreat (pay adjuncts to attend)

• Awareness of the Network

• Way to facilitate communication between faculty, staff, and administrators campus-wide, include student services and beyond

• Ways to encourage use among everyone; for digital immigrants, provide practical applications; how to train digital natives on how to use resources effectively

• Create cohorts within broader Network (e.g., TRIO, Puente, learning communities, etc.)

• Support/assistance for our own campus workshops/trainings

• Follow-up regional meeting to get down to nuts and bolts; move beyond theory to specifics

• Training on learning how to ask the right questions—get to the heart of the issue

Answers from Pilot Colleges on First Site Visit • Alignment with K-12

• Use Facebook for a blog instead of Edulounge—many are already on Facebook

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• Taps into other issues related to basic skills, such as the learning communities consortium

• Clearinghouse for best practices and experiments

• How to educate the campus—ways to encourage buy-in

• What different schools are doing coordinating across the disciplines—basic skills students taking history and other courses; make connections with all other networks—be a team and not work against one another

• All join CalPass—all colleges in the Network

• Identify programs that have been able to use technology to scale up in basic skills; all the good software and lab design that is out there; also more online components

• Student Services—professional development—examples of how they are involved in student success; what other colleges are doing with student services—special orientations for diversity students

• Professional development for associate faculty

• Make sure the Network puts students at the center; need for “student stories” in all we do

• Integrate life-management class across the curriculum—modules and issues that hit all students

• More connection to community resources/libraries and others

• Fold service learning into basic skills

• Ideas for multiple ways of delivering assessment and orientation; bilingual publications for orientations; help with counseling and orientation about not discouraging them with long lists of math classes they have to take when in basic skills

• Creating a cohort through EOPS

• More about jobs and careers and helping basic skills students; helping students have direction

• Not funneling every student into transfer or the same things

• Collectively define what we mean by “student success”; change the measurements and the definitions of success in the state. We’ve allowed the state to define what student success is—let’s look at it ourselves and redefine it.

• Helping us to be scholars in particular areas, such as writing, reading, math, etc.

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• What is data—what are the parameters—what are the categories—how we can apply it and how we shouldn’t apply it—examples from other campuses—have an inquiry role rather than an adversarial role; have data coaches help us with this; clear definitions of what is one level below transfer, two levels below transfer, etc.; maybe put major research projects on web; reporting data out—quarterly updates

• Help from the network for “thorny” questions

• Major talks should appear on the website and be shared through the Network—streamed on the network; names of people and contact numbers so that we can get hold of people easily

• Colleges that have Trio grants that are focusing on basic skills but aren’t using BSI money—Schools that have both Trio and basic skills—how are they interfacing?

• What have other colleges done in terms of reporting—what have they done for their presidents or VPI’s—how to do assessment and evaluation; what have others done with getting report backs from those in charge of various projects

• How transparent are others with their funds; how conscientious are they—how they are setting up their funds

• How to integrate more reading, writing, math into CTE programs—do it as an inquiry group—

• What other colleges have done with BSI funds that contextualize English and math

• Have a series of roundtable discussions with leaders from each table—leaders by discipline or basic skills coordinators, etc.

• Best practices in practice—actual examples of them and how they are working at other schools

• People showing their “warts”—tell us the problems you are having—having clear processes and the problems they had along the way

• What people’s thoughts are for sustaining BSI—how do you try to live in an unpredictable world; how do we keep people excited and interested in what we’re doing with BSI; if we have limited resources, how do we bring in new ideas

• Linking resources—examples such as healthcare, rent, etc.; linking resources to non-credit programs and adult schools