Accuplacer Prep—A Streaming Solution

 

Audience is a fundamental focus of our Accuplacer videos project. While we developed these videos with an understanding of our community-college students in Waco, Texas as our audience, we believe that your students’ needs are likely similar, if not identical.

 

This is an actual in-class exercise from Nick Webb’s READ 300 class. It illustrates the very basic nature of skills that students are taught in the lowest level of developmental reading courses.

 

                  

 

 

This is an actual class schedule for a developmental student. Note that all but one class (Art Appreciation) are the lowest-level courses possible.

 

 

                

 

But, what about prior to enrollment?

 

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/accuplacer/preparation-sample.html

The URL provided links to the College Board’s website and provides explanations about and sample questions from the Accuplacer test. There was a time, very recently, when our college merely handed this URL to students on a slip of paper. This was our only effort to prepare students for the Accuplacer. We decided that this was not the most effective way to serve our students’ needs, so we asked: what else could we do?

How would you feel?

 

How would you feel?

 

To understand what else might be possible, we returned to the realities of our audience. This slide—presented at a community-wide education summit in 2009 by the president of McLennan Community College, Dr. Johnette McKown—identifies some of the significant, and endemic, barriers that impede students’ successes in college.

 

To highlight what may be one of the more overwhelming aspects of the Accuplacer, the following slide offers a math equation for you to solve.

This slide offers the solution to the math problem—along with a link to an accompanying video presentation of the solution.

Visit the actual link:

http://media.mclennan.edu/flv/NDQxZWJkMWY0YTA3NTk3ZDg5MzU1MTlh

 

What would students do?

This link offers two video testimonials from MCC students who scored poorly on their Accuplacers and who wish they had been better informed about the test.

 

This slide identifies the gender, ethnicity, and ages of developmental students at MCC in 2008. Of note is that 70% of developmental students are female and over 50% are between the ages of 18 and 21.

This slide identifies 18 area high schools whose students enrolled at MCC in 2008. Two items are of note. First are the differentials between academic students and workforce students. Second is that these same 18 schools will provide data in later slide

 

This slide presents an aggregate of the 18 high schools identified in the previous slide. Of those students enrolling at MCC from the 18 high schools, 70% placed into some level of developmental math course, over 50% placed into some level of developmental reading course, and over 20% placed into some level of developmental writing cou

 

This slide presents campus-wide data, which may include, but is not limited to, students from the 18 high schools. Over the span of three consecutive years, developmental students at MCC maintained a fairly consistent pass/fail rate. Of note is that, in all three years, more that 50% of students failed their developmental math courses. Also of note is that, in two of the three years, more than 50% of students failed their developmental English/writing courses.

This slide presents national statistics relevant to developmental students. Of note, and concern, is the final bullet point.

 

As we examined both our classroom experience and the statistical data, there were clearly many problems. One solution we focused on was using technologies in a manner that seemed to match students’ most common methods of accessing information. They Tweet. They YouTube. They all (seemingly) carry smart phones. If this is how they “see” the world, then we would create a tool that could function in “their” world.

As such, we developed a series of short, targeted, audio-narrated, and visually animated instructional videos that could be viewed by anyone with Internet access.

 

 

McLennan Community College link for Accuplacer Prep Videos

Our Testing Center now hosts Accuplacer test-preparation videos. A link to the videos is shown at the bottom of this slide.

http://www.mclennan.edu/students/testing/accuplacer/prep.html

 

 

The videos are accessible from a single webpage in index form. (This slide only shows the top half of the index; the second half of this webpage is shown on the subsequent slide.)

This slide shows the bottom half of the index page for all Accuplacer test-prep videos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resources for making your own videos:

The following links will allow you to view and print pdf documents that may be of help in recording videos.  JING is an excellent free program that allows you to record your screen, with a limit of 5 minutes.  Camtasia is software that may be purchased.  It is a powerful program that allows recording and editing, with no time limits.  Microsoft One-Note was used in the math videos as a place to write while recording.  Snag-It is a great capture and edit program that comes with Camtasia.

Camtasia 6.0 

Link to “Learning Center” providing great tutorial videos on this program.

http://techsmith.custhelp.com/app/answers/list 

Editing Video w Windows Movie Maker and Uploading to YouTube

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/ODZhMGJiOTllMWMyNWI0YWNjOWJjNDY1

Jing

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/YjQyOGI2YzkwYTQyODFiODYxYjMwOTI5

Jing-Screencast

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/M2Y2ZDRiYzI0Yjc3YjIzYmQwZDRmYTBh

Microsoft OneNote

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/MzgzZmU3ZjM3MGNlODcyMDhhNDQ2OGVm

Recording and Uploading Flowchart

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/MzNlYTY2MWIyNjdkYzJhYWMwYTdiOGI0

Snag It

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/YmFjMDI3NTNjNTNkOTg1NTAzMmI5NTIw

Creating an Animoto Video

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/YzQ3MDRkYzQ1ZDViNjZiMzliNDA2Yzkw

 

 

Created by:

Accuplacer Prep—A Streaming Solution

 

Audience is a fundamental focus of our Accuplacer videos project. While we developed these videos with an understanding of our community-college students in Waco, Texas as our audience, we believe that your students’ needs are likely similar, if not identical.

 

This is an actual in-class exercise from Nick Webb’s READ 300 class. It illustrates the very basic nature of skills that students are taught in the lowest level of developmental reading courses.

 

                   slide 3

 

 

This is an actual class schedule for a developmental student. Note that all but one class (Art Appreciation) are the lowest-level courses possible.

 

 

                 slide 4

 

But, what about prior to enrollment?

 

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/accuplacer/preparation-sample.html

The URL provided links to the College Board’s website and provides explanations about and sample questions from the Accuplacer test. There was a time, very recently, when our college merely handed this URL to students on a slip of paper. This was our only effort to prepare students for the Accuplacer. We decided that this was not the most effective way to serve our students’ needs, so we asked: what else could we do?

How would you feel?

 

How would you feel?

 

To understand what else might be possible, we returned to the realities of our audience. This slide—presented at a community-wide education summit in 2009 by the president of McLennan Community College, Dr. Johnette McKown—identifies some of the significant, and endemic, barriers that impede students’ successes in college.

 

To highlight what may be one of the more overwhelming aspects of the Accuplacer, the following slide offers a math equation for you to solve.

This slide offers the solution to the math problem—along with a link to an accompanying video presentation of the solution.

Visit the actual link:

http://media.mclennan.edu/flv/NDQxZWJkMWY0YTA3NTk3ZDg5MzU1MTlh

 

What would students do?

This link offers two video testimonials from MCC students who scored poorly on their Accuplacers and who wish they had been better informed about the test.

 

This slide identifies the gender, ethnicity, and ages of developmental students at MCC in 2008. Of note is that 70% of developmental students are female and over 50% are between the ages of 18 and 21.

This slide identifies 18 area high schools whose students enrolled at MCC in 2008. Two items are of note. First are the differentials between academic students and workforce students. Second is that these same 18 schools will provide data in later slide

 

This slide presents an aggregate of the 18 high schools identified in the previous slide. Of those students enrolling at MCC from the 18 high schools, 70% placed into some level of developmental math course, over 50% placed into some level of developmental reading course, and over 20% placed into some level of developmental writing cou

 

This slide presents campus-wide data, which may include, but is not limited to, students from the 18 high schools. Over the span of three consecutive years, developmental students at MCC maintained a fairly consistent pass/fail rate. Of note is that, in all three years, more that 50% of students failed their developmental math courses. Also of note is that, in two of the three years, more than 50% of students failed their developmental English/writing courses.

This slide presents national statistics relevant to developmental students. Of note, and concern, is the final bullet point.

 

As we examined both our classroom experience and the statistical data, there were clearly many problems. One solution we focused on was using technologies in a manner that seemed to match students’ most common methods of accessing information. They Tweet. They YouTube. They all (seemingly) carry smart phones. If this is how they “see” the world, then we would create a tool that could function in “their” world.

As such, we developed a series of short, targeted, audio-narrated, and visually animated instructional videos that could be viewed by anyone with Internet access.

 

 

McLennan Community College link for Accuplacer Prep Videos

Our Testing Center now hosts Accuplacer test-preparation videos. A link to the videos is shown at the bottom of this slide.

http://www.mclennan.edu/students/testing/accuplacer/prep.html

 

 

The videos are accessible from a single webpage in index form. (This slide only shows the top half of the index; the second half of this webpage is shown on the subsequent slide.)

This slide shows the bottom half of the index page for all Accuplacer test-prep videos.

 

The Accuplacer test-prep videos went live on our college’s website in March 2011.

But, our next challenge was to promote the videos.

 

 

An obvious partnership was with the sole other college in a several county region that served

the same student population:  Texas State Technical College—Waco.  The following is a title slide

from a joint presentation made by Dr. Elton E. Stuckly, Jr., the president of Texas State Technical College—Waco

and by Dr. Johnette McKown, the president of McLennan Community Collge.  Their co-presentation

to the Greater Waco Education Summit 2009 provided all of the graphs used in this presentation.

 

 

 

TSTC and MCC share a similar student population.  Karen Armstead, an assessment specialist at TSTC who oversees counseling and Accuplacer management,

insists that student regularly switch back and forth between her campus an ours, taking English composition at MCC, for example, one semester but taking

dental-hygienist courses at TSTC a different semester.  Our students face the same challenges.

 

 

 

Twice during the past 2010-11 academic year, Teri Barnes and Nick Webb presented the Accuplacer videos at an Accuplacer symposium

along with Karen Armstead from TSTC. The symposia were organized by the Heart of Texas, Tech Prep Consortium, whose mission is to provide

trainings and workshops for area high-school administrators, counselors, and teachers. Both Karen Armstead and Susanne Parrish of the

Tech Prep Consortium have stated that they are publicizing the videos to their students and clients.

 

 

Due to the two symposia presentations and follow-up emails to the 44 attendees, MCC was able to communicate the existence

of the Accuplacer test-prep videos to 12 of the 18 high schools that have been tracked in the Fall 2008 study (cited in earlier slides).

That means that now, potentially, 66% of the original high schools have a new tool to help prepare their students for the

college-admissions process. Further, if the number of entering students from these schools were to remain constant for the Fall of 2011,

potentially, 80% of those students might have been informed about the videos.

 

 

In an additional community-outreach capacity, MCC publicized the videos at the 2011 Youth Employment Services (YES!) Expo.

This is a multi-county job fair attended by 1,500 area high school students and 100 of their counselors and teachers, representing

more than 25 high schools. Each of the 1,600 attendees received the standard-takeway item: a nylon backpack with draw strings.

In each backpack was a color, 8 ½ x 11 flyer for the Accuplacer test-prep videos. (The flyer is pictured at the right.)

 

 

 

Due to the expanded reach of the YES! Expo, MCC has now communicated the videos to 83% of the high schools

in the original 2008 study. If numbers of entering students from these schools were to remain constant for the

Fall of 2011, the potential number of students reached is 95%.

 

 

While we have begun external communications about the videos, our next focus is to publicize them on our own campus.

We would like these videos to help all of our incoming students in the Fall of 2011. To approach this goal, other key department

must also take responsibility for marketing the videos. The following list contains agenda items that Teri Barnes and Nick Webb

will advocate for during July of 2011. This is a wish list, to be sure. But many of these suggestions have been endorsed by

executive-level leadership at the college. There is a strong institutional desire to examine whether the videos can have a

positive impact on Fall 2011 Accuplacer scores and on developmental-course registration.

 

 

We conclude with an actual student speaking about her Accuplacer experience.

 

Resources for making your own videos:

The following links will allow you to view and print pdf documents that may be of help in recording videos.  JING is an excellent free program that allows you to record your screen, with a limit of 5 minutes.  Camtasia is software that may be purchased.  It is a powerful program that allows recording and editing, with no time limits.  Microsoft One-Note was used in the math videos as a place to write while recording.  Snag-It is a great capture and edit program that comes with Camtasia.

Camtasia 6.0 

Link to “Learning Center” providing great tutorial videos on this program.

http://techsmith.custhelp.com/app/answers/list 

Editing Video w Windows Movie Maker and Uploading to YouTube

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/ODZhMGJiOTllMWMyNWI0YWNjOWJjNDY1

Jing

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/YjQyOGI2YzkwYTQyODFiODYxYjMwOTI5

Jing-Screencast

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/M2Y2ZDRiYzI0Yjc3YjIzYmQwZDRmYTBh

Microsoft OneNote

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/MzgzZmU3ZjM3MGNlODcyMDhhNDQ2OGVm

Recording and Uploading Flowchart

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/MzNlYTY2MWIyNjdkYzJhYWMwYTdiOGI0

Snag It

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/YmFjMDI3NTNjNTNkOTg1NTAzMmI5NTIw

Creating an Animoto Video

http://media.mclennan.edu/download/YzQ3MDRkYzQ1ZDViNjZiMzliNDA2Yzkw

 

 

Created by: