Program Goals

I am part of a graduation competencies committee at my college.  I recently wrote a blog post on the graduation competencies work that we are doing at the college.  As a first stage of this work, we are looking at our program and course outcomes.  I wanted to see where this work fits within the college framework and in the framework of the State's Vision Project that Dr. Richard Freeland, Commissioner of Higher Education for the State of Massachusetts is leading and I created a mind-map to see all of this in context.


Here is a mind map I created to define the context and framework for this work.  The map has been made using Freemind, a mind mapping software that I recently downloaded on my computer.   Click on the mindmap to view it in its original size to view it in its original size.  Hopefully, it will be something to think about.  I would appreciate your suggestions or comments to improve this.

If you want to use this mindmap, you can use it freely with due credits to my work.  (Suggested Credits: Mindmap created by Chitra N. Javdekar using Freemind, first created November 2011, blog link: )  I would also be happy to send you my *.mm file if you wanted to build on it.    

Been there, done that!

Summer has turned out be busy.

Beginning of June, I attended a 3-day faculty retreat for discussing graduation competencies at the college. Turned out an excellent retreat arranged by MassBay's Yves Salomon Fernandez.  The conversations we had there were very enlightening. Graduation competencies are the skills or competencies each student graduating from the college is required to have acquired before he/she graduates from the college. 

As an example,  at our college, all students, whether they are STEM students or not, are required to meet computational literacy requirements before they can graduate.  Our college has been offering a CS 100 class that currently satisfies this graduation requirement. 

The question then is: Is this class still relevant to our students who routinely use digital and social media for connecting with the world unlike our previous generations who needed this class to gain those basic computing skills?   What computing knowledge then should a Humanities student today possess other than what he/she already has as a result of living in an increasingly digital world?  Why should a CS or an Engineering student take the same class as the Humanities student does? 

If you can answer these questions, then another important question comes:  If a change is brought about in the manner in which we teach this course, or in the course content itself, who will be affected by this change?  How do we involve the adjunct faculty in this type of decision making?  How do we satisfy students who must be trained for their respective professions in a timely manner?

Certainly, we were not able to answer all these questions, but it proved a discussion worth having.  I learned several different ways in which people think, in my own institution.  I expect to participate in a number of such discussions over the next year with my colleagues before we can actually develop a policy and implement processes that will help achieve the goal.

Toward the end of June, I attended the 2011 ASEE Annual Convention at Vancouver, BC.  
Vancouver Convention Center

I presented a poster at ASEE convention based on my work for my MN 125 Engineering Computation with Application Software course.  I developed this course over the last year in collaboration with Prof. Steve McKnight of Northeastern University, Boston MA.  Steve's work in the High Tech Tools and Toys Lab is an exemplary work and we were able to integrate a few of his hands-on educational modules - into my class.  (This calls for a separate entry in this blog so I will save writing on it for some other time).

I also went to DC twice this summer, for a NSF STEP grantees meeting and another as a reviewer for a grant.   At the NSF STEP Grantees meeting, I had a chance to meet with several NSF Community College representatives.  The workshops held by NSF were extremely good, generated a lot of interaction and gave me a good insight into what works.  I also met some really smart women in the field of STEM education.  

In addition to this, I also was the chair of a search committee and I was happy to learn today that our search was a successful one.  I have a new faculty colleague and I am excited about the opportunities for my program this year.

But it has not been just work.  I was also able to get some much needed vacation in upstate NY with my family and friends at a week-long camp.   A week free from any digital media was actually an excellent idea!  I hope to do it again next year.

Overall it has been a busy and satisfying summer.

Great Educational Tools: Scratch | Project | Kettle_Cup_Animation

As part of my work, I sometimes am looking for ideas that interest students, particularly younger - middle school students.  A few years ago, I experimented with Scratch (developed by MIT) to do this and was able to create this very simple animation.  I call it my Kettle_Cup_Animation.   This was made on a day when it was raining outside and I wanted to have some tea desperately!  But I could not leave this project I made in Scratch before I went to have my (real) cup of tea.  The animations are easy to create.  Younger kids may need a bit of help with understanding what a sprite is and about planning their ideas clearly.   But overall, a great tool to teach some computing basics, particularly "loops".

Here is an applet.
Learn more about this project


Here is a link too. 

Scratch | Project | Kettle_Cup_Animation

Retention - No longer an issue?

As part of my work, I am always in midst of conversations about the need to increase the participation of students into the Engineering, Science, Technology and Math areas. In fact, the topic has remained in discussion for most of the last decade. What is concerning policy makers and educators is that US is not producing enough science and engineering (S&E) graduates. This issue has been reported in the 2002 S$E indicators: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind02/pdf/c02.pdf - The 2002 report mentions that of the 25% students who enrolled in bachelor Science and Engineering degree programs nationwide, about one-third dropped out of the programs in their second year, and about 38% actually completed an S&E degree. That is why it was quite surprising to me that the 2010 S&E report does not mention retention as an issue. Also, if the increased federal funding during the past decade has helped increase the retention, that has not been reported in the 2010 report either (at least to my knowledge). What I would like to see is whether this issue has been addressed and if so, what strategies have been successful.

Program Upgrades

2010 turned out pretty busy for me. I wrote a proposal for updating the Engineering and Mechanical Engineering programs at my college. At our college, we have a "Two Meetings" rule - the course or program proposals pass through a rather lengthy governance process that consists of two meetings at each of the following levels: departments, divisions, academic standards committee, and general body meeting of the college faculty. During the first meeting, the course comes in for "Information only" and then in the second meeting, the committees/departments/divisions have to vote on the proposal. If the course withstands the scrutiny, it passes to the next level. The procedure took about a year and half to approval and implementation. The course and programs were approved in Spring 2010 and were implemented this year (2011).

One of the major changes we made to the program was inclusion of an engineering computation course. The course is an ambitious course that can serve as introduction to engineering and gives students access in their early, formative years as engineers to state of the art tools, and technology. This kind of access is particularly important when the schools are struggling to keep students interested in the STEM careers, and to graduate more engineers and scientists. I will write about my experience about teaching this class soon.

Just when you introduce a new course, it becomes important to take a hard look at your existing offerings. The programs at community colleges have to be in harmony with those at the four year institutions where the CC students transfer. Most four year schools only accept a limited number of credits from community colleges, and therefore programs at CC can never be too heavy in the number of credits.

We have tried our level best to ensure that we offer a leaner, cleaner program that would allow students to transfer maximum number of credits when we made these changes.

The process was no doubt lengthy and sometimes even frustrating to some, but is also very educational. Not only you learn about programs at other institutions, but you also learn about the college, the governance processes, and most importantly about the people who make this happen: your colleagues from your divisions, and faculty and staff you would have no chance of knowing otherwise.