Campus Proposals and contacts

Cerritos College will focus on 170 “Pre-TRAC” students who have expressed an interest in becoming teachers, but are not ready for college level courses. Cerritos will create learning communities of developmental English or mathematics, plus a counseling course. Each term, six developmental faculty (three from English, three from math) will work with Visible Knowledge Project (VKP) mentors to investigate teaching and learning in their classrooms.

Chabot College is creating “Springboard to Transfer,” a learning community for students beginning in developmental courses who want to be ready for transfer within three years. The campus has also implemented supplemental instruction in developmental math courses. They will link developmental math and Springboard to Transfer and expand SI in basic math courses. Chabot has a faculty learning community and an ongoing “Talking about Teaching” series.

City College of San Francisco will focus on integrating reading and writing in basic skills English classes and strengthening instruction by tutors in the math lab. In addition, they will implement new Transitional Studies courses that will connect Adult Basic Education to the pre-collegiate courses and provide students with more flexible routes to credit-bearing courses. In faculty development, the project will organize a series of monthly “Carnegie Conversations.”

College of the Desert will extend current learning community programs, which now focus on developmental English, to include developmental mathematics, and will work on assessments to match learning outcomes. As part of this effort they will continue their collaboration with local high school faculty.

College of the Sequoias established LISTO, a learning community that creates cohorts around an ethnic studies curriculum and STEPS, a learning community around developmental mathematics. The college will expand the initiative to include learning communities in Language Arts (English and human development/learning skills), quantitative skills (math plus human development), and an English language learning community.

Glendale Community College has an English faculty member who has developed Web-based developmental English materials as a “living textbook” integrating student work and learning skills with content area materials. Other English faculty will observe, edit, and prepare to use the Web-based materials. In mathematics, the faculty will extend use of common finals and item analysis to provide feedback to instructors and students.

Laney College’s English faculty will create developmental English courses that integrate reading and writing. Each term, eight faculty (from English, math, ESL and Project Bridge) will meet monthly as part of a reflective inquiry model. In addition, the project will train student instructional aides to work one-on-one and with small groups in the classrooms of the faculty in the reflective inquiry group.

Los Medanos College established course-specific teaching communities as part of a Title III grant. Faculty teaching the same developmental English or math course meet throughout the semester and examine student learning. They will continue this work. Faculty will develop curriculum handbooks for target courses and will create an interactive Web site with materials, cases, examples of teaching and other resources for new and adjunct faculty.

Merced College faculty have been experimenting with two innovations – learning communities and supplemental instruction (structured peer tutoring) in English and math.  They will extend their learning communities to include pre-collegiate classes and will include an SI instructor in those classes.  They will also expand their SI program in English reading and composition.

Pasadena City College’s Teaching and Learning Center created an interdisciplinary Summer Bridge/First Year Experience learning community that includes English, math, and study skills/student success courses for the entire summer and first academic year. They will experiment with creating a shorter one-semester learning community that will serve a larger and more diverse population of students.