Sustaining a Culture of Inquiry

Julie Bruno, FacilitatorJeffry Lamb, Solano College

Tracy Schneider, Solano CollegeJenny Simon, El Camino CollegeGregory Stoup, Canada College

Jenny Simon

El Camino College

How does a college sustain the motivation

to do outcomes assessment?

Build a critical mass of experts

Integrate & build on what you already do

Give people interesting questions vis-à-vis outcomes assessment

Celebrate accomplishments

Tracy Schneider

Solano Community College

How does a college integrate a culture of

inquiry into its outcomes assessment, planning,

and accreditation?

Everything is based on inquiry.

Dialogue is the focus.

Connect at every level

Integrate calendarsand documents.

Keep accreditation in mind.

Gregory Stoup

Canada College

Inquiry in complex systems like higher education is a highly social process, not solely an intellectual exercise.

The process is composed of many small acts, carried out by different people at different points in time.

The Dynamics of Inquiry

Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

“Learning emerges from an ongoing conversation about things that matter with both passion and discipline”

-Parker PalmerThe Courage to Teach

If you want to learn you have to take part in the conversation

Learning is founded on evidence and inquiry

Inquiry is not just about generating data

Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

The role of evidence

Data do not enter a vacuum and suddenly illuminate a hidden truth.

Data join the narrative that experts have developed through years of observation & practice.

The narrative explains and reacts to the data and the two coevolve to shed new light on the issues we study.

Designing the right venues

The goal is to draw people into regular conversations that develop into distinct communication forms

that then lead to action.

Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

At one level we want to support inquiry everywhere

How many students make it through our ESL sequence?

Does a student’s math background effect performance in my economics course?

Do students taking library orientation do better in English?

What are the basic skills needs of students from our feeder high schools?

Do students on Financial Aid persist at higher levels?

What is the completion rate for MESA students compared to other STEM students? Do our Learning

Communities help to increase student success?

Does joining a student club help increase a student’s persistence?

How do students receiving a C grade in English perform in History?

Have rising book costs forced students to take fewer classes?

How many high school grads visiting our campus actually enroll?

How can we increase the percentage of students completing the pre-transfer math sequence?

Book Store: Would providing more open source material for developmental math courses help students persist longer?

Placement Office: Does our math placement prep program help students place higher in math and do they succeed when they get there?

Student Activities: Are there clubs or activities we can create that might improve persistence among pre-transfer math students?

Counselors: Would pre-transfer math students perform and persist at high levels taking fewer or more units?

Math Faculty: Would it be helpful to build opportunities for our students to meet with faculty informally outside of the classroom & would that improve student success?

Tutoring Office: Do basic skills math students that come to us within the first four weeks of the semester do better than those that come later?

Math Instructor: Would an accelerated curriculum/program lead to higher levels of student learning and persistence?

Outreach: Can we work with our feeder high schools to identify early on which students are most likely to require math remediation at college?

But we have to carve out time to address big questions from multiple angles

Process of inquiry

•Not a search for an absolute truth rather a tool for making better-informed decisions.

Domain of possible solutions to the

question at hand

Answer the questions that eliminate dead end solutions

Inquiry framed toward action

Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

We can’t get immobilized by ambiguity or too many choices

What to do when you reach the limits of your research and yet still face multiple choices in how to proceed ?

Trust your intuition & chose !Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

Often when there are no clear answers we need to experiment

When it comes to improving performance enlightened trial and

error trumps strategy-guided actions

As part of our inquiry we need to encourage a culture of experimentation

Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

Where does Inquiry begin?

What are you curious about as a professional ?

At its core Inquiry should start with one fundamental question:

Gregory M Stoup, Cañada College

Jeffrey Lamb

Solano Community College

FormsPathway to action/funding

Integrate

Keep SLO/SAOs and College plans vital

At Solano: Program Review and 3 Year PlansOperational/ Strategic Proposals

Organic response from BSI and VTEA

Agendas, Minutes, and ReportsEverything is Evidence

MyGroups

Centralized Accessible User Control

•Participation•Organization•Transparency

Sustainability

A Tour

• http://techlr.pbworks.com• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMqjdnt5

bpM

The Back-up