Chris Juzwiak

Carnegie Grant, Fall 2005

Week 11

Both Ezell and Morales continue to work independently this week. I have spent quite a bit of time making corrections to the new quizzes.

On Tuesday, November 8, I flew to Laney College in Oakland, California, to give a presentation on our SPECC research (The Full E-mersion). The event was well-attended, with over twenty faculty present from ESL, Developmental English and math, and two faculty from Alameda College. The audience evinced genuine enthusiasm for the tech-based materials, and several instructors approached me afterwards to express an interest in future collaboration. They were so earnest in their inquiry that I expect they will follow through. I suggested that I am always available for other presentations or workshops at their campus. The day after my presentation, Meryl Siegal, the SPECC facilitator for the event, wrote to me: “We were very inspired by the work you put into your project! You are a curriculum hero!”

Adjunct math instructor Tracy Camp picked me up at Oakland Airport, and we spent a couple hours talking about their campus’ self-paced developmental math program. Since they are in the process of evaluating and revising their program, I suggested that an encounter with the GCC developmental math/SPECC team might be beneficial. Upon my return to GCC, I spoke to Yvette Hassakoursian and asked her to contact Tracy and her colleagues at Laney.

I also had lunch with Christine Will, the coordinator for Laney’s SPECC grant, and we exchanged a lot of good ideas. In particular, Laney’s success in bringing math and English faculty together for FIGs inspired me to make the same thing happen here at Glendale.

Here at home, I received a felicitous surprise. As it so happens, one of our most gifted Developmental instructors, who has been resolutely “anti-technology”, is on the tenure review committee for Denise Ezell. In evaluating Denise’s class last week, she was treated to a demonstration of the power of electronic pedagogy. (Denise has been so enthusiastic about these new materials that she wanted to create her own slideshow for this lesson and evaluation—a courageous decision given that she is on relatively new ground.) Well, our formerly “anti-technology” colleague was so captivated by what she observed in Denise’s classroom that she asked Denise for a few pointers. Immediately, Denise sent her all her PPT presentations and made a few suggestions. Yesterday, as I was walking down the hallway, I was “snatched” into our colleague’s office as she exclaimed: “Look what I’m doing! Look at this!” On her own, she had figured out the basics of PPT and was designing a lesson for her afternoon class. In looking at the four slides she had designed, I could see immediately that she had “gotten it,” and that she was bringing all her pedagogical expertise and creativity to the design of the PPT lesson. Already, she was exhilarated by the anticipated response of her students. It’s clear to me that we have a new and powerful ally in our development and promotion of electronic pedagogy in the Developmental classroom. (I made an appointment with her for next week to give her a personalized tutorial in PPT.) I am very much encouraged by the response this pedagogy engenders through simple demonstration and word of mouth; with several unsolicited adjunct and full-time faculty expressing preliminary commitment to this pedagogy, the sustainability of our project looks more promising than ever.

Our campus is closed this Friday for the Veteran’s Day holiday, so our weekly meeting will be postponed until next Friday.