Technology and Knowing Names

It's a no-brainer to say that faculty learning student names is in the category of "the more, the sooner, the better."  And related to this is the idea that the classroom works better when the students know one another (at least by name) and that such classroom level solidarity will translate to higher levels of feeling connected on the campus as a whole.


So why don't we deploy our database technology to facilitate it?

Here's one way it could work.  Banner has student pictures.  Banner has class rosters.  Faculty can access class rosters and click on individual students and see pictures.  Add a few simple functions:

1.  Click a button and you get a PDF (or MSWord) file of "index cards" with student names, basic info, and pictures.  Faculty member can print out.  Oila, index cards with names and photos.
   
2.  Click a button and you get a single web page with pictures and names (a bit like those grids of pictures we used to get in grade school).  Easy -- it's just a page within myMills.
   
3.  Click a button and you get a PDF (or MSWord) file of name placards.  These can be printed out and students fold them and put them on desk in front of themselves.
   
4. Click on a class and you get a basic seating chart of the classroom assigned to it and a list of the students enrolled in the class.  Drag names to seats and the program produces a seating chart with pictures and names.  
   
   
5. And finally, here's a radical idea: we should find a way to let students do this too (after we test and refine the idea with a few focus groups).  Within Banner or Blackboard a student should be able to push a button "who are my classmates" and see names and faces of classmates.  If the lawyers get too worried about privacy and such it could be made an opt-in function -- when class begins students are asked to create an "index card" on which they can indicate what information can be seen by classmates ranging from nothing to picture, short bio, etc.
   

Note that at many schools secretaries or administrative assistants will produce these for faculty on request, but that's a poor use of resources given that we could write the above programs once and be done with it.

I've heard in the past that there's all manner of paranoia about student privacy, about the risk of pictures floating around on the web, etc.  Please, let's treat these as problems that it's someone's job to solve, not as roadblocks that can be erected in the path of pedagogical improvement.

Public Agenda Report on Retention

The organization Public Agenda has released a report on college completion.  A New York Times article discusses the report.

Highlights (of article, not report)

20% 2-year college enrollees graduate in 3 years

40% 4-year college enrollees graduate in 6 years

Study correctly compares drop-outs and graduates:

	Drop-Outs	Graduates
No Financial Aid	70%	40%
Income under 35K	50%	25%
Parents Help with Tuition	40%	60%
Parents Some College	60%	70%

Article discusses report as aggregate national phenomenon NOT at level of individual schools or types of school. Utility for Mills lies in raising issues we have perhaps not thought of and providing some (to be used carefully) national norms against which to compare our experience.