Self-Study Introduction

Our Goal: To develop a five year plan for improving Basic Skills Education at MiraCosta College

 

Our Definition: For this initiative, California is defining basic skills as “skills in reading, writing, mathematics, and ESL, as well as learning skills and study skills, which are necessary for students to succeed in college-level work.”

 

Our Process: To spend a month--from  mid-February to mid-March--completing a self study that identifies 1) the effectiveness of our existing efforts, 2) the obstacles to improving basic skills education at our college, and 3) ideas for improving our efforts.

 

Please share your thoughts with us as we honestly and frankly assess our basic skills efforts at Miracosta. Improvement is our goal; simply validating what we already do will not help us achieve that goal.

You can contribute your ideas and help shape our plan to improve Basic Skills Instruction at MiraCosta in four ways:

 

1. Use this wiki to add your comments and ideas to any and all of the four areas that we are studying.

 

2. Drop by OC 3511 between 4-5 on any Monday between now and March 3 to share your ideas in person with Jim and other Basic Skills Committee Members (February 11, February 18, February 25, and March 3).

 

3. Send an email to jimsullivan@miracosta.edu with your observations, evaluations, ideas, suggestions, and comments or call Jim Sullivan to chat on the phone (x6303).

 

4. Attend our Basic Skills Initiative retreat on Saturday March 8 at the Hilton Inn Gardens in Carlsbad (8am-5pm). Please RSVP to miracostabsi@gmail.com to let us know that you will be attending. Even if you plan on attending the retreat, we hope you will also contribute your ideas to the self-study via this wiki, by attending a meeting, or through a note to or conversation with Jim before the retreat.

 

How to Use this Wiki:

 

The wiki will work best and be easiest to make contributions to if you use the Firefox web browser.

 

Log in (upper right corner) with our password: miracosta

 

In the menu of pages in the upper right section of this page, you will find a list of the four areas we need to study:

 

To review a section and add your comments and ideas, simply click the link to that self-study area. When you arrive at the self-study page the click on the "edit page" button at the top of the page and simply type your ideas on to the page.

 

You can help us keep track of these ideas and contributions if you put your name in parentheses next to your contribution.

 

Here is an example:

 

How effectively is MiraCosta directing students toward available support resources on campus?

 

I think we are not doing this as well as we could be. Many students do not know about these resources and where to find them. Perhaps instrutors could include more information about these services in course syllabus and revisit this information regularly during the semester. We might also need to strengthen orientation programs to help students understand the value and availability of these resources. (Jim Sullivan)