edited by ELLEN and JAY BARDOLE Vincennes University Vincennes, Indiana 47591
Information Processing Model
Helping Individual Students
Input
J o h n V. Clevenger Lord Fairfax Community College Middletown, VA 22645 One of the major difficulties facing many community colleges is the extremely wide range of students found within a course. Three years ago, the National Science Foundation awarded Lord Fairfax Communitv College a CAUSE grant, -~ whose goal was to develop the ahiiities offaculty to diagnose the diverse needs and characteristics of science students and design methods to provide for these, within the limitations of a small communitv colleae.' The results of this pru,ect suggest approaches that others, who are encounterin~similar problems, may use. The program applications a faculty member may emphasizes utilize on a student-by-student basis. The various components of the process, which require little or no in-service training, can be used individually or as part of the overall program. They are
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General
Notes. Reading, Audio-Visual
Processing Recall from memory or ~ractice
Output
Testing, labs, D~OWS
Reasoning
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I ) Enrk idcntificationofrrudentswith diffieultws,uiingacnr~follg designed first course test and a brirf m,t~alinterview wth atu-
den& who do poorly. 2) A follow-up, problem-solving interview to diagnose areas of
learning difficulty, with specific suggestions to students who wish to improve performance. 3) A specific type of course content analysis, based upon student performance in terms of Memory, Skills, and Reasoning. 4) RSVP (Response System With Variable Prescription),a computer system for individualizing instruction which provides personalized letters to students and systematic management "nd walunrmn materiala for thr inrtrurtor. 5 ) A n invrntory of materials in the college I.earnin(: Resources Crntpr which has Ireen krwd to the pnhlem-solvmginterview and the course content Galysis. 6) Random access videocassettes of course units, which are keyed to unit ohieetivev and referenced throueh - the RSVP oeraonalized student letters. This paper will describe the first four of these in more detail so that others mav use them. Althouah manv of the ideas and methods are not new, we found thatcompilkg them for ourselves and other facultv was useful and they do tend to enhance and make moreproductive student/instructor interactions. Early Identification of Students with Difficulty As mentioned, our general goal a t the beginning of the project was to develop means of dealing with individual variations among students. We planned to accomplish this by nresentine material to students in a varietv of wavs, - . depending on pre-course assessment of the student's cognitive style and other characteristics. Our oriainal - attempts led us to the conclusion that this was an impractical approach in our context. Althoueh there were several reasons. essentially two sets of factors lexus to this stand; we found an even greater variation in student characteristics than expected and our predictions of relative successes were not accurate enough.
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We then decided on another approach t(1dcaling with differences amone students. We selected a method of very careful monitoring ofgnd personalized feedback to the &dents as they progressed through the course, with early and rapid focus on those students who were not successful. For these students, we have an initial and follow-up problem solving interview, with specit'ic suggestions to those students whn wished to improve performance. After the initial interview the choice I,, continue the process is clearly left to the srudent, although personalized feedhack continues. Diaenusis of students' oroblems learning- chrmistrv is done within the context of the course. This provides not only amore realistic assessment of ~ o s s i b l esuccess. but also a areater motivation for the stud;nt to seek developmental h e l b This helo is then offered. as much as possible. within the context of t i e course. At the beninnina of the course, the students are asked to complete a-two-
