Hi Ruth,
We're an ATD Leader College so we are pretty well-involved and invested in the process of addressing our developmental education needs. We have two pilots, one for English and one for Math.
The Math Project is going into its third year. We received a FIPSE grant to fund an online, self-paced acceleration through the develomental math sequence. You can find out more about that project at http://www.northampton.edu/Smart-Path.htm. We have recently met the number of students required by our grant proposal and the project coordinator is working throuhgh the data.
In English, we piloted our first Accelerated Learning Program based upon the Baltimore Community College. Our first cohort of students performed well, but we are waiting to see how they do in the second English course before we begin to draw conclusions. The n was small as well as we only offered two sections of ALB in the spring.
We are also using part of a grant for ATD colleges from WalMart to develop a Retention Toolkit for faculty. This is a brand new initiative; the Retention Toolkit folks have not even met yet. Since we are a community college and many of our adjuncts are either online or evening/weekend only, we are going to use a lot of technology to help build those resources. We are considering Jings and will definitely include the material in the Adjunct 101 Blackboard Course Site. We offer our adjuncts a certificate of recognition for completing orientation and training in their first semester so the Retention Toolkit will be folded into the professional development odfferings.
We definitely ar making progress, but a perpetual challenge is the small n yielded each semester and fluctuating DFW rates for courses. We have an awesome Institutional Research person who helps us gather and analyze the data, but we are still struggling with what to do with all of the data we have.
Nichole