The “Miracle” of Improved Reading Scores? Back to Basics

 

We’ve been hearing a lot recently about how elementary school students’ reading scores declined drastically as a result of pandemic shutdowns. And in the US, the southeastern (aka deep south) states have historically had low reading scores, even pre-pandemic.

 

So, imagine everyone’s surprise to hear about the “Mississippi Miracle,” in which several deep south states have dramatically improved their 1-4^th graders’ reading scores, despite the pandemic. “Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022. Louisiana and Alabama, meanwhile, were among only three states to see modest gains in fourth-grade reading during the pandemic, which saw massive learning setbacks in most other states.” (AP article)

 

What explains this improvement in reading abilities in historically under-performing states? Two common-sense things:  (1) a focus on phonics, and (2) early screenings for struggling readers and learning disabilities. These states have trained their elementary school teachers in the science of teaching reading (formerly known as phonics), and have provided targeted resources to schools with the lowest reading scores. At least one state (Mississippi) has also stated clear expectations for students, parents and teachers: children will meet a minimum standard of reading abilities by the end of third grade or be held back.

 

One other critical component of the “Mississippi miracle” is its student-centered nature. Teachers meet children where they are in reading, and devise strategies to help each student address their own personal challenge(s) in learning reading. That could be a learning disability like dyslexia; it could be lack of opportunity to read and practice; it could be not knowing the basics.

 

Teaching phonics is a method well-suited to online learning, whether used by a teacher in a physical classroom to maximize the use of limited time, or whether used by teachers and parents as an adjunct to in-class learning. Find tried-and-true online phonics teaching resources (some free, some at a small charge) here and here and here.

 

 

 

Social Media Use Is Affecting Our Kids’ Mental Health

 

The US Surgeon General issued an advisory in late May suggesting that children and adolescents are over-using social media, and that this poses a risk of harm to their health and mental well-being. As many as 95% of teenagers aged 13-17 reported they used social media regularly, while as many as a third of teenagers reported they were on social media “almost constantly.” Observing that the teenage years support rapid brain and emotional development, Dr. Vivek Murthy said that “we are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis – one that we must urgently address.”

 

The Surgeon General’s advisory contains several practical suggestions for making social media safer for children and teenagers. Policymakers should develop safety standards and find ways to limit access to harmful social media. Technology companies should become more aware of the negative impacts of their social media platforms and work with other stakeholders to improve systems to provide greater safety for child and teenage users. Parents and caregivers should become more aware of the nature and level of their children’s social media use and establish realistic guidelines for its use. Surgeon General Murthy intends to prohibit his own children from accessing social media until they are at least 13 years old, but may reconsider that decision and wait until they are 16 years old. Children and teenagers can raise their own self-awareness about how much and which social media they participate in, and learn to self-regulate their exposure to it. Finally, researchers should prioritize social media and youth mental health research to inform the development of best practices for social media use.

 

The American Psychological Association has recently issued its own health advisory on the harm of teenagers’ use of social media, highlighting the need for fostering social media literacy and digital citizenship. Digital citizenship curriculum materials developed in conjunction with the Harvard School of Education are available for just this purpose. Common Sense Education offers lessons plans and activities by grade level (K-12). The curriculum for grades K-2 addresses questions such as: How do we balance our time with technology? How do you stay safe online? What footprints are you leaving online? What are ways you can be kind online? How do you stand up for people you care about? How do you know something you hear or see is true?

 

It's been a very long time since I was in second grade. But I think I’d learn a lot from this curriculum. Our children’s mental health future depends on all of us raising our awareness about the benefits and pitfalls of social media use, and taking steps to manage it wisely.

Going to College for Free is Getting Easier

 

The objective of the Straube Foundation (sponsor of this blog) is to show how anyone anywhere can obtain quality education at little or no cost. So I was particularly happy to read that the city of Boston Massachusetts is expanding its tuition-free community college offerings. All Boston city residents, regardless of age, income or immigration status, will now be able to attend one of six partner community colleges free of charge. Both tuition and fees will be covered for associate degrees and certificate programs at the six participating schools. For some students, up to $2,500 of overdue past tuition and fees will also be waived. Learn more here.

 

Boston’s decision is part of a recent trend at the state level to encourage post-college-age adults to get a degree that will help them find employment in high tech industries like clean energy and advanced manufacturing.  

 

In some states, the new programs will cover tuition, fees and textbooks for community college students. Under Massachusetts’ MassReconnect program, anyone over 25 with a high school diploma or equivalent will be able to attend one of 15 community colleges for free (tuition, fees, books and supplies). It appears that degrees can be taken in any subject. The Michigan Reconnect program offers free tuition and fees to anyone over 25 with a high school diploma to earn an associate degree or complete certain skill certificates. The Tennessee Reconnect program offers grants to pay the amount of tuition and fees unpaid for by other state or federal aid programs. Eligible students must be over 25 years old, and can pursue any degree at any institution, but the grant amount will be limited to the cost of a community college associates degree or skills certificate.

 

These are just examples of the free college education that is currently available in the United States. Most are in-person colleges, but post-Covid offerings may include online options. A summary of the various state programs can be found here.

US News 2023 Rankings for Best Online Programs

The US News & World Report has issued its 2023 rankings for the best online programs at regionally accredited institutions. Top three in various categories:

 

Bachelor’s programs:

·      University of Florida

·      Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Worldwide (tie)

·      University of Illinois – Chicago (tie)

 

MBA programs:

·      Indiana University – Bloomington (Kelley) (tie)

·      University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler) (tie)

·      University of Southern California (Marshall)

 

Graduate business programs:

·      Indiana University – Bloomington (Kelley)

·      Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper) (tie)

·      University of California (Marshall) (tie)

 

Graduate criminal justice programs:

·      University of California – Irvine

·      University of Massachusetts – Lowell

·      Sam Houston State University

 

Graduate education programs:

·      Clemson University (Moore) (tie)

·      University of Florida (tie)

·      University of Illinois Urbana – Champaign

 

Graduate engineering programs:

·      University of California – Los Angeles (Samueli)

·      Purdue University – West Lafayette

·      Pennylvania State University – World Campus

 

Graduate computer information technology programs:

·      Columbia University

·      Johns Hopkins University (Whiting)

·      Virginia Tech

 

Graduate nursing programs:

·      University of South Carolina

·      Duke University (tie)

·      Ohio State University (tie)

·      University of Alabama (tie)

 

 

 

 

Chatbot AI Can Enhance the Educational Experience

 

In last month’s blog post, we outlined the challenges that ChatGPT presents for assessment, or how it can support cheating without getting caught. In this month’s post, we’ll explore how chatbot AI can enhance the educational experience. And it can.

 

The Brookings Institution suggests that “[u]sed in the right way, ChatGPT can be a friend to the classroom and an amazing tool for our students, not something to be feared.” They analogize chatbot AI to calculators. The calculator does the routine math processing, while the student has to know which processing to ask the calculator to do and how to interpret the results. Similarly, in a writing exercise, ChatGPT can collate all the relevant background information; but the student still needs to do the synthesis and know which information to ask for. And the students can exercise their editing skills to make the ChatGPT-generated draft an A+ paper.

 

UCLA law professor John Villasenor is encouraging his students to generate first drafts of his assignments using ChatGPT, and teaching them to use the draft report or brief ethically. “To remain competitive throughout their careers, students need to learn how to prompt an AI writing tool to elicit worthwhile output and know how to evaluate its quality, accuracy and originality.” He still plans to hold his students to the usual academic and honor code standards (accurate facts, well-organized text, no plagiarism), but helps them learn to use chatbot AI as a valuable research tool.

 

Most of the concern about ChatGPT has come from academics in the humanities, where a written work product is the usual basis of assessment. Some academics in more technical fields are institutionalizing the calculator analogy and allowing students to use chatbot AI to do the mundane calculations underlying more sophisticated analysis. Matthew Lang, an economics professor at University of California Riverside, says: “In a course like econometrics, where students are required to work with data throughout the course, ChatGPT can be particularly beneficial. It allows for a reduction in time spent on tedious tasks such as data loading and troubleshooting, which can be a source of frustration for students. This enables me as an educator to focus more on the critical analysis of empirical models, leading to a deeper understanding of the subject for my students.”

 

Some teachers have used ChatGPT as a tool to make their own lives easier. They’ve asked the chatbot to develop lesson plans or to draft quizzes. One creative use of the chatbot was to develop a class activity: “write a script for a ‘Friends’ episode that takes place at the Constitutional Convention.”

 

Chatbot AI is here to stay, both in education and in the real world after graduation. As teachers, let’s embrace it and use it to make our students ever more knowledgeable and accomplished. They may even ask ChatGPT to write you a thank you note!

Study Hall Scholarships Available Until March 7, 2023

 

Study Hall, an online program offered by Arizona State University (ASU), offers anyone the opportunity to learn what it’s like to be in college without the commitment to BE in college.

 

There are videos about “How to  College” and “Fast Guides to Majors” that give the potential college student a taste of what being in college is all about. “How to College” videos range from “How to Apply to College” to “How to Choose a Major” to “How to Pay for College.” Majors included in the “Fast Guides” are anthropology, psychology, education, political science, English, nursing, sociology, history, sustainability, social work, mechanical engineering, inter-disciplinary studies, data science, health sciences, computer science, criminology, biology, electrical engineering, mass communication and business.

 

Study Hall participants can take a select number of college-level courses through ASU without enrolling in college first. If you decide after getting your grade that you would like to enroll in college, you can claim college credits then. And the credits are valid at any higher education institution that accepts transfer credits from ASU. Courses available include Intro to Human Communication, Rhetoric and Composition, Real World College Math and US History to 1865.

 

Learn more about Study Hall opportunities here.  There is a $25 charge for taking a course, and a $400 charge to claim college credit after finishing the course. Scholarship pricing is available to anyone who registers for a course by March 7, 2023. Courses must be completed and the credit added to your transcript by August 9, 2023 to qualify for the scholarship pricing.

Will Chatbot AI Change Assessments for Online Instruction?

 

There have always been many ways for students to cheat in the classroom. Sometimes the cheating can be detected, and other times not. I had a case of plagiarism in the first higher education course I ever taught. The student almost got away with it, but made the mistake of writing about my specialty subject area. He copied verbatim (text and graphics) an as-yet-unpublished research paper that a colleague had asked me to peer review just months before. I recognized it immediately, confronted the student, and appropriate disciplinary action was taken. After that, I started using plagiarism checkers (e.g., Turnitin), but I’m not sure that an unpublished draft would have raised any red flags.

 

Now, with the introduction of artificial intelligence chatbots that can write papers and reports from scratch (e.g., ChatGPT), the problem of catching cheaters has become more complicated. Even if the instructor suspects that a report or paper is not the student’s original work, there is no way to prove that the student used an AI chatbot to write it.

 

There are many stories about what individual teachers are doing to address the AI chatbot challenge. Some are requiring students to write their first drafts of papers in the classroom, using computers that can monitor where they go to do their research. Some are moving away from requiring written papers to having more oral exams and handwritten assignments. Many schools have banned use of the AI chatbots on their school computer networks. Others are moving away from open-book or take-home assignments.

 

Some are planning to use AI chatbot-generated reports as a springboard for critical analysis. What’s missing in the chatbot’s analysis. Are there other ways to interpret the same research results? Other instructors are trying to revise their materials to focus on literature and other texts that the AI chatbots may not have been “trained” on. And to focus their testing on critical analysis, rather than synthesis of easily researched material (the AI chatbot is good at synthesis, less skilled at analysis).

 

Online education will be affected in similar ways by the AI chatbot revolution. Online instructors will be equally stumped to identify chatbot-informed papers and test results. In some ways, the online platform may make it even easier for students to fool their instructor with AI chatbot-generated content. Some of the responses being tested in brick-and-mortar classrooms (e.g., in-person testing and paper-writing) cannot easily be implemented in an online format.

 

What to do to ensure that online students produce original work? Share your ideas with our readers by emailing me.

 

In the end, it’s the student who is most harmed by cheating. They don’t learn the material, and that may come back to haunt them in the post-graduation real world.