John E. Roueche

Entry Level Assessment in College.

An increasing number of institutions are initiating assessment programs designed to place incoming students in the most appropriate track and to provide developmental assistance to those who need it. A good assessment program can lessen the human misery resulting from student failure. It can also alleviate other major problems faced by community colleges. Consumers are demanding accountability for the money they spend on higher education, and at the same time enrollments are declining rapidly. Colleges are competing for students, including the nontraditional or high-risk student, and they must assure these students a chance for success by means of effective entry-level assessment. This article is intended to be a source of information for any institution or individual instructor or counselor who is interested in assessment. It assumes that the average community-college staff member is not too familiar with the basics of assessment and attempts to provide a usable handbook of elemental and essential facts.

Helping the “Unmotivated” Student: Toward Personhood Development

Community college teachers are joining many other educators in their concern over how to motivate their students. Through open admissions policies and vigorous recruitment, community colleges are enrolling more and more nontraditional students; that is, students from low-income, minority backgrounds who have experienced little satisfaction and success in their previous educational endeavors. Many of them turn to community colleges because of the wide variety of occupational programs offered. However, according to many teachers, these students seem to be unmotivated, incapable of work, and unwilling to try. It seems apparent, though, that if a student is enrolled at all he must have some sort of motivation and desire to work. Still, the failure rate for these students is alarmingly high. Perhaps we need to approach the education of the nontraditional student from an entirely different perspective than has previously been devised. Most students, particularly those enrolled in vocational programs, value work as much as anyone. Indeed, the value of work, stemming from the Puritan ethic, has always contributed significant weight to Americas ideology. The dignity of work and success at ones work are valued by our society as highly as individual freedom itself. Indeed, the freedom to choose what one

Implications of Reduced Funding Upon the Open-Door Commitment

One of the inside jokes that community college folk tell each other is that the only thing that remains constant about community colleges is change. Recently, however, more and more references have been made to steady state, maintenance era, and other similar terms that acknowledge the end of the period of rapid growth. To equate lack of growth to lack of change, however, is an error in judgment. This paper will focus upon the question: what will be the effect upon the varying types of students attending community colleges if we enter into a period of imposed limited enrollments and resultant reduced funding? The current situation is an interesting phenomenon in itself; state legislatures and governing boards are capping enrollments and limiting funds at a time when enrollments themselves are already leveling off or dropping! One obvious reason for a decline in enrollments is the reduced number of high school graduates. Community college administrators learned during the 60s how to recruit students who were not just graduating from high school but who had dropped out some years ago and were now ready to accept

Effects of Individualized Instruction on Control Expectancy: A Field Test.

Abstract This study was conducted in order to determine whether or not one semester of individualized instruction is enough time to create in students an increased sense of being able to control payoffs in life and to lead students to develop a more realistic appraisal of their ability to control payoffs in an academic environment. Paradoxically, the converse may occur. When first confronted with a success-oriented instructional process and opportunities for self-pacing, students with failure histories may become more external, anxious, or uncertain. In order to examine these notions, a sample of 126 educationally deficient students who were beginning their first semester of study in a community college were selected from 18 different sections of math, English, and history and tested twice—once at the beginning of the term and again late in the term just prior to finals.

Causing Learning in the Community College: The Recipe.

Roxanna LaForge is working towards her doctorate in junior college education at the University of Texas. She holds a masters in instructional development from the University of Texas. twentieth century. While no one could singly blame Whitney for the Civil War or Ford for air pollution, anyone living in the 1970s must be aware of the far-reaching influence exerted upon a society by the technology it develops. Anyone, that is, except the large number of educators who reject the advances of educational technology and ignore the importance of research. While engineers and scientists teamed their expertise to put man on the moon in twelve years, the majority of educators continued to follow the tried-butnot-so-true course of putting thirty students in five rows listening to one teacher lecture, and when this system failed to produce young men