Chris Juzwiak

Carnegie Grant, Fall 2005

Week 7

This week, our team (Ezell, Morales, and I) visited Pasadena City College to dialogue with their SPECC team, Lynn Wright and Brock Klein in particular. We learned a great deal about how they have structured effective learning communities. I gave a 30 minute presentation on our SPECC research to a small group of Developmental instructors, and I was much encouraged by their probing questions and sincere interest in our work. Subsequent to our visit, Lynn Wright reported that “there is quite a lot of buzz going on about your presentation/project.” I offered my services at any time, in terms of workshops or other collaborative efforts that might help PCC’s Developmental faculty augment their use of instructional technology.

Here at home, Morales and Ezell operated independently this week. Interestingly, Morales reports that while she is using the prepared PPT slides for English 189 (largely because she is teaching the course for the first time and appreciates having proven materials at hand), she is using much of her time and energy to create new PPT presentations for her higher-level Developmental class (English 120), based on the design principles she learned during our research last semester. She is very enthusiastic about the response from her students to these new materials. I consider this auspicious news indeed: it demonstrates that this pedagogy is infectious for both teachers and students and can be transferred to virtually any course level.