In 2004, LaGuardia Community College received the TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Certificate of Excellence for the Enhancement of Undergraduate Education. The following essay, written by Bret Eynon with significant contributions from J. Elizabeth Clark, was prepared as the application for that award. While it is not fully current and was written for a particular purpose and audience, we offer it here because it provides an accessible overview of the program and its evaluation outcomes data as of Fall 2003. When appropriate, we've added updates to numbers and data to reflect the growth of the program since the award was granted.
Embracing the Challenge
In April 2000, eight faculty members at LaGuardia Community College gathered to begin a conversation about teaching with technology. Faculty college-wide had just acquired desktop computers in their offices and student labs were available. Yet outside the Computers and Information Systems department, few teachers used the Internet or other new digital resources in their courses. These eight faculty-from English, Counseling, and English as a Second Language-were neophytes, but they wanted to learn. What began that spring as a tentative, preliminary discussion has in three years grown into a broad, confident initiative that has transformed teaching practice, enriched student learning and engagement, and sparked institution- wide change at LaGuardia.
Named for Fiorello H. LaGuardia, New York's New Deal mayor who united a city of immigrants, LaGuardia Community College of the City University of New York is located in an industrial neighborhood in western Queens, the most ethnically diverse census district in the nation. Serving approximately 12,000 matriculated students and 28,000 continuing education students, LaGuardia offers liberal arts curricula; developmental education and transfer preparation; and career education in fields from Travel and Tourism to Nursing. Helping students become full participants in the city's economic and civic life, the College educates New Yorkers from all backgrounds, ages and means. More than 2/3 of LaGuardia students are immigrants; more than 3/4 are students of color.
Long a national leader in learning communities, through the 1990s the College had been slow to mobilize to meet the challenge of new educational technologies. Like most urban community colleges, LaGuardia was hindered by limited resources for hardware, software, and support staff. Budget cuts, state mandated testing, and heavy teaching loads discouraged many faculty and made it difficult for them to imagine how they could take advantage of the new opportunities provided by networked computers and the web. Moreover, many faculty were concerned that technology would raise a barrier between them and their students. Talk of "distance learning," "teacher-less classrooms," and automated approaches to learning made many faculty wary. Knowing that economic and social obstacles already made it difficult for LaGuardia students to stay in school and focus on courses, faculty were concerned that impersonal, "drill and skill" approaches would only make things worse. A tiny group of "early adopters" worked in isolation, their achievements seen as intimidating and irrelevant to the needs of most students.
The meeting of eight faculty in the Spring of 2000 marked the first signs of change. With funding from the Title V program of the U.S. Department of Education, faculty and staff from LaGuardia's Academic Affairs division were preparing to launch Designed for Learning, a new program that would spur a breakthrough for LaGuardia faculty and students. By Fall 2000 the number of faculty engaged in Designed for Learning had grown to 20, as a new cohort of faculty began developing ways to use technology to support the engagement necessary for educational success. After three years, Designed for Learning has had a broad and dramatic impact on LaGuardia, enriching classrooms and curricula, helping thousands of students to engage with learning, and demonstrating that technology provides a unique opportunity to help our students develop critical thinking skills. Moreover, it has generated highly significant systemic change, linking the entire college with a transformational Electronic Student Portfolio initiative that adds outcomes assessment to an already outstanding combination of pedagogy and technology.
What Does "Diversity" Really Mean?
It is no overstatement to say "America begins at LaGuardia." Students come from 158 different countries-from Colombia, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Rumania, and Thailand-and speak 108 different first languages, and a key part of the institutional mission revolves around meeting the needs of this incredible student body. In addition to our international connection, LaGuardia is a historically Black college and a Hispanic-serving institution, and ranks third in the nation in graduating Latino students. LaGuardia treasures its diversity, and recognizes that it translates into a campus of students who have been traditionally underserved by the educational system. In many cases, this leads to significant under preparation in key academic areas. In 2002, for example, almost 90 percent of the entering student body required at least one developmental skills course in reading, writing or mathematics.
LaGuardia serves the students most likely to be left on the lagging side of the Digital Divide. College leaders realized that students needed technology skills for success in careers and advanced education. At the same time, they wanted to find ways that technology could advance student learning. LaGuardia faculty and College leaders looked for ways that technology, linked with thoughtful, student-centered pedagogy, could help students focus on their learning, engage with challenging content, build learning skills, and strengthen their connections to courses, faculty, and one another. Designed for Learning was created to help faculty use technology in new strategies to engage students and advance their success as students and workers, thinkers and leaders.
Designed for Learning
In Fall 2000, seeking to advance its mission and better serve its students, LaGuardia used a five-year Title V grant to launch a three-pronged program that would:
- Create an intensive faculty development program: Designed for Learning;
- Improve access to digital technology, including construction of labs in tutorial areas and the library;
- Create a Student Technology Mentor Program to support faculty as they test new strategies with students.
With help from key faculty and Dr. Bret Eynon, a historian who joined the College to found the Center for Excellence in Teaching with Technology, the College analyzed the issues and formulated a fresh approach. Recognizing that faculty innovation was the key to meaningful impact on students, the Center developed a strategy to serve faculty needs. This meant shifting the "technology training" paradigm. Where most programs offer short-term, "one-shot" workshops, the Center set up Designed for Learning (DFL) as a year-long process, with intensive institutes, monthly seminars, hands-on workshops, classroom experimentation, and on-going reflective discussion. And when faculty who completed their first year wanted to continue, the Center started the DFL Fellows program, extending support for a second and even a third year.
Moreover, where the previous technology programs had been led by IT staff and emphasized technical skills, Designed for Learning was set up to be faculty-led, and to focus on the needs and questions of the mainstream. As a result, the core of the DFL seminar is faculty conversation that links pedagogy and technology, exploring the exciting possibilities and nitty-gritty realities of dealing with technology in the classroom. In the seminar, faculty consider issues such as guided inquiry with on-line resources; on-line interactivity to improve student literacy and advance dialogic learning; constructivist approaches to student multimedia presentations; and the creation and effective use of Blackboard course websites as tools to facilitate student-faculty interaction. These approaches to technology and pedagogy are not unique to LaGuardia, but rarely are they implemented on a broad scale in an urban community college setting. DFL's success emerges from the process of helping large numbers of faculty understand the national dialogue about technology in education and translate that dialogue into local praxis.
One of the most dynamic elements of the program emerges from the relationship between faculty and students. DFL works, in large part, due to the Student Technology Mentor (STM) program, which creates partnerships between students and faculty in exploring the use of digital media in the classroom. Students receive special training and internship credit that allow them to work with faculty to help them develop their projects and implement them in the classroom. Linking faculty and students as co-learners in the inquiry process, these partnerships have proven to be one of the most successful aspects of the program.
STMs receive intensive training and unique experiences that advance their skills while preparing them for success in education and career. Many STMs have gone on to pursue technology majors in four-year colleges, and several have remained to mentor new STMs. Interestingly, as STMs have the opportunity to work with faculty and to assist in the classroom, growing numbers of STMs have become interested in careers as teachers, seeking to combine teaching and technology in new and innovative ways.
Designed for Learning is not about distance learning - it is about connection and engagement. Linking faculty across disciplines, the seminars encourage professional reflection and change. "My level of self-confidence around technology has increased tenfold, and I feel able to move forward without being intimidated," wrote one faculty member in her evaluation. "Particpating in the project has refreshed me as a faculty member; it made me feel valued and it gave me the opportunity to sit collectively with my peers and discuss pedagogy in earnest." The seminars help faculty connect technology to LaGuardia's historic pedagogical strengths, such as learning communities, interdisciplinary literacy-building, and collaborative learning. The program emphasizes engaging students, helping them connect with course content, big ideas, and each other. And the program connects students and faculty in a common project, fostering new connections in the college community. "Now I feel more a part of LaGuardia than ever," wrote one STM in a year-end evaluation. "Not only as a student, but as an STM, I have had the opportunity to serve the college in the best way possible to help others."
Growing Success, Creating Change
Designed for Learning is now beginning its fourth year and has drawn significant institutional support. Since 2000, the intensive, year-long program has involved 84 faculty members from every department of the college [over 130 by Spring, 2005]. Each year, the number of applicants is more than double the number of available slots; for 2003-04, the ratio of applications to available slots was 3/1. The College has responded to this demand by creating an outreach structure that supports DFL graduates as they lead mini-seminars that involve over 200 faculty per year. The institution has further demonstrated its commitment to DFL by:
- Providing funds to allow DFL to double in size and include part-time and continuing education faculty;
- Utilizing a newly-implemented student technology fee to train and support more STMs;
- Creating a DFL Fellows program, offering DFL graduates laptops and helping them to develop leadership, curriculum development and grant-writing skills that will lead to ongoing change;
- Spotlighting DFL's work in LaGuardia's Fall 2003 college-wide professional development day ("Opening Sessions") which focused on the theme of "The Connected College" and highlighted the work of Designed for Learning faculty; a plenary session for 300 faculty and staff and more than two dozen breakout workshops showcased the ways in which faculty are changing classroom practice and institutional culture.
In Fall 2002, the College took an additional step to institutionalize the program. Creating a new LaGuardia Center for Teaching and Learning headed by Dr. Eynon, the College linked DFL to a range of other programs, such as Writing in the Disciplines; Reading Across the Curriculum; Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum; Experiential Education; First Year Experience, Teaching Portfolios, and a New Faculty Colloquium. This step not only recognized the quality of the faculty learning taking place in DFL; it also ensured that the linkage of technology and pedagogy infuses other programs affecting hundreds of faculty and thousands of students college-wide.
Perhaps the most outstanding sign of the College's commitment to the innovations generated in Designed for Learning is the College's new ePortfolio initiative. Over the next three years, this ambitious project seeks to include all of the College's matriculated students in creating individual ePortfolios, multimedia collections of their work from the first semester of college to graduation. The College is enthusiastic about the ePortfolio project and its transformative potential for students. The ePortfolio will serve as a locus for collecting and showcasing student work for potential transfer or future employment. It will also serve as a mechanism for college-wide program assessment. The ePortfolio is the current culmination of the College's investment in technology and pedagogy training for its faculty; it combines best national practice with the promise of significant growth for both students and faculty. The project has already drawn national attention with presentations at such conferences as the American Association for Higher Education and the Conference on College Composition and Communication.
A Culture of Engagement
Designed for Learning has attracted institutional resources because its impact on teaching and learning is evident to students, faculty and College leaders. Dr. Lynn Gregory, an outside evaluator responsible for assessing the college's Title V-funded program, has written a series of formal reports analyzing quantitative and qualitative data (including classroom reports and curriculum materials, student and faculty surveys, and focus group interviews with both students and faculty) that reveal the program's most significant impacts, including:
- Growth in faculty skills with a range of new technologies;
- Advances in student confidence and skill in using technology for learning;
- Increased student engagement with course subject matter;
- Improvement in students' ability to use the computer for writing and communication; and,
- Greater student engagement with faculty and other students.
Dr. Gregory's evaluation confirms what program administrators know: faculty want to join DFL because it helps them learn new skills and rethink their classroom practices. Even more importantly, faculty report that their new skills in linking interactive technology and pedagogy translate into classrooms with more engaged students.
Faculty Technology Skills
Dr. Gregory reports that, after one year in DFL, faculty participants move from little or no expertise with technology to greater confidence in dealing with an increasingly wired world. For example, prior to DFL, only 11 percent of the faculty consider themselves "advanced" or "expert" in using web authoring tools; by the end of the first year, that number rises to 55 percent. Similarly, prior to DFL, a mere 6 percent of the faculty consider themselves "advanced" or "expert" in using web-based course management tools; after DFL, 82 percent consider themselves to be "advanced" or "expert."
Change in Classroom Practice
Many "technology training" programs fail to help faculty make a transition from workshop to classroom: faculty gain skills, temporarily, but never use them. DFL's year-long interplay between seminar and classroom implementation helps faculty succeed at this transition. Faculty not only integrate technology into their classes, they continue to do so long after their initial program year. Dr. Gregory found that they consistently link interactive technologies and pedagogies. Documentation and observation of classroom activities reveal that faculty implement technology-pedagogy combinations in each of the three main areas emphasized by the program: student inquiry with content-rich web resources, leading to critical thinking activities; structured on-line writing tasks designed to help students gain greater fluency in language and literacy as they deepen their understanding of course content; and projectbased assignments where students create web pages and multimedia presentations that integrate their learnings and express them in text, images, design and sound. Faculty report that these approaches increase student motivation because they encourage independence, flexibility and ownership of the learning process. In this sense, faculty are drawing upon and refreshing LaGuardia's tradition of pedagogical innovation. "The Discussion Board promotes an exchange of ideas and helps students learn in ways we may not even be aware of," one senior faculty member observed "The technology promotes a project-based approach that encourages continuity and purpose. Wonderful is the only word I can think of to describe the way students start to pair off and form groups so they can exchange ideas and solutions easily. This is collaborative learning at its best."
Data from other sources adds to the picture. Nationwide, students at colleges participating in the Community College Study of Student Engagement were asked how frequently they used digital or electronic tools in their classes. On a scale of 1 to 4, in which 1 was "never" and 4 was "very often," the national mean was 2.09 - just above "Sometimes." Students across LaGuardia and in DFL supported classes answered the same question: for LaGuardia as a whole, the mean was 2.34. For DFL students the mean was 2.83, a dramatic difference. Similarly, College statistics for the Blackboard course management system suggests that, three years after launching the DFL and supporting its spin-offs, classrooms around the college are sprouting technology enhancements. In Spring 2000 there was not one Blackboard-supported course at the college; by Spring 2003, our Blackboard system had over 500 active courses with more than 8,000 student users. In April 2003, LaGuardia's Blackboard system averaged 18,000 "hits" per day, as students and faculty logged on to check course materials, complete assignments, and post their ideas in the Discussion Board.
Improved Student Skills & Engagement
As DFL helps faculty rethink their classrooms and integrate self-selected combinations of interactive pedagogy and technology, LaGuardia students benefit, particularly in the targeted areas of improved computer skills and increased engagement. Dr. Gregory's data suggests, for example, that students in DFL classes are more than twice as likely as students in comparison classes to conclude that their courses significantly advanced their computer skills. And the impact goes beyond computer skills. More than three quarters of students in DFL classes indicated that the use of digital technology in the DFL course helped them improve their writing and communication skills (in non-DFL comparison classes less than half of the students reported that effect). Similarly, asked whether technology had helped them improve connections with faculty, 77 percent of students in DFL classes indicated that it had; for students in non-DFL classes, the number was 47 percent.
This last item points to one of DFL's most significant goals: the use of technology to build student engagement. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the related Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) have drawn national attention to engagement as "the single best predictor" of student learning and personal development. Identifying benchmarks for specific aspects of student experience - active learning, time on task, critical thinking - these studies use student surveys to analyze engagement. "Research shows," states one CCSSE report, "that the more actively engaged students are-with college faculty and staff, with other students, with the subject matter - the more likely they are to learn and to achieve their academic goals." Seeking appropriate national standards, the Center incorporated a set of questions adapted from the CCSSE into its Spring 2003 student surveys. Comparison with national data, and with the data on LaGuardia as a whole, suggests that the impact of Designed for Learning goes well beyond the simple increase in the use of computers. For example:
- Students at LaGuardia and community colleges nationwide were asked to use a scale of 1 to 4 (in which 1 was Never, 2 was Sometimes, 3 was Often, and 4 was Very Often) to answer the question "how often have you worked with other students on projects during class?" Nationwide, the mean answer was 2.49, halfway between Sometimes and Often. Collegewide LaGuardia students' mean answer was slightly lower, at 2.43. For students in DFL classes, however, the mean was 2.73, suggesting that DFL classes involve a significantly higher degree of active and collaborative learning, a key indicator for engagement.
- Students used the same scale to rate how much their work "emphasized making judgments about the value and soundness of information, arguments, or methods." The national mean was 2.53. LaGuardia-wide, the mean was 2.74. For students in DFL classes, the mean was 3.15, revealing that DFL classes involve students in activities that demand higher order thinking, another key indicator of engagement.
- A third question addressed engagement from a different angle. Students used the same scale to rate "how often have you worked harder than you thought you could to meet an instructor's standards and expectations." The national mean was 2.5. The LaGuardia mean was 2.69. The DFL mean was 2.88. Challenging course work is not opposed to, but rather linked with the strong sense of participation and connection in the DFL classroom.
Responses to other CCSSE questions followed a similar pattern. Consistently, students in DFL classes showed gains of over half a point on such key indicators for engagement as synthesizing information, building writing skills, learning to work effectively with others, and analytical thinking. [Data from 2003/4 revealed similar results, confirming this pattern.]
Moreover, as LaGuardia students have become increasingly connected to the college community and their educational goals, their written comments reflect the statistics collected in the national surveys. One student writes, "I have learned that a group is better than a single individual to perform a technological task." Another student, recognizing the importance of connection in a diverse community reflects, "My interpersonal skills were improved very much …now I know how to talk/deal with students and faculty who might not have the same academic or ethnic background."
The pattern is striking: across the board, despite all of the obstacles, students in DFL classes are not only using technology more frequently and consistently; they are also working harder; writing and collaborating more; and building higher order thinking skills. And these changes in the quality of student classroom experience are increasingly translating into improvement on key student outcomes, such as course completion. A just-finished college-wide analysis reveals that DFL courses show a reduction of nearly 20 percent in the rate at which LaGuardia students drop out of their courses. At every level, DFL is building student engagement in the learning process.
Conclusion
The eight faculty who met in the spring of 2000 to talk about teaching with technology had no way of anticipating the level of change heralded by their conversation. Yet that early conversation launched the fresh and innovative vehicle for change the college had been waiting for. Designed for Learning has proven to be a faculty development program in the truest sense of the word. Faculty have taken ownership of technology, using the occasion to re-examine and implement far-reaching changes in their teaching practice and the college community.
As DFL moves forward, graduating faculty are developing new mechanisms for using and sharing their learning. DFL faculty and STMs have designed a host of interactive resource sites for departments and programs, from the Writing Center to the Teaching Portfolio program.
When the College launched its First Year Experience program, with a Common Reading(Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican in 2002 and Ansary's West of Kabul, East of New York in 2003) DFL faculty and STMs worked together to design beautiful, thoughtful resource sites for students and faculty. DFL graduates are taking on faculty development leadership roles across the college, spurring the college-wide exploration of interactive technology and pedagogy. This re-invigoration of educational innovation is gaining momentum, having an impact well beyond the courses of the DFL faculty. This process of renewal can only help strengthen recognition of LaGuardia's national role in innovative education. Just this week, the national Community College Study of Student Engagement notified LaGuardia that it had been selected as one of a handful of community colleges nationwide that demonstrate "outstanding performance" on the benchmarks for engagement.
For the college community, the most significant change has been the relationship to students. The DFL data demonstrates that careful pedagogical implementation of technology provides an important vehicle for self-empowerment, particularly for a population of students statistically on the margins of success. As a result of DFL, thousands of students and faculty across the college have come to have a new relationship to the college and to one another in a collective exploration of new approaches to learning. Willing, wired, and working, LaGuardia faculty and students are trailblazers in a newly connected college community.