[music playing]

Speaker: OTAN-- Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Randy Erickson: Thank you for joining us, everybody, everybody here. So what we're going to do is talk about our pilot program and some of the success stories and what some of you guys did during the program and how you were successful and what you did differently. We've also got some student success stories, as well.

So what we'll do is we'll start with Rachel, who's with us at New Readers Press. So she's going to do a quick overview of what we're talking about with New Readers Press Online and what it is. And then we'll go to Dr. Bowler and then we'll go to Dr. Gonzalez. And then we're going to kind of make it like a freeform discussion. So we've got some questions [ INAUDIBLE ] and then if anybody here or online has questions. And Kathy, where are you from?

Kathy: I am one of your friends from Mount Diablo Adult Education. Were in Concord, California.

Randy Erickson: Mount Diablo. Yes. Yeah, hi. We love Mount Diablo [ INAUDIBLE ] know where that is.

Eva Bowler: You guys have snow?

Kathy: Yes.

Eva Bowler: Of course you do.

Kathy: Oh my gosh, yes. It's gorgeous.

Randy Erickson: Do you guys have sun [ INAUDIBLE ] It's super sunny here today.

Eva Bowler: It's a good day today, yeah.

Kathy: Yeah, it's beautiful here today. The sun is shining. It's pretty cold, but beautiful views. Everywhere around us, you look and you see just a little bit of snow. So it's a nice change.

Randy Erickson: That's nice. Yeah, we've got some beautiful snow-capped mountains here today. So OK, cool. We've got some more people joining. And as we go, we'll just keep it flowing. So I'll turn it over to Rachel. You can share your screen. And as people join, we'll just keep going.

Rachel Budde: All right. Can you see my screen OK?

Eva Bowler: Yep.

Randy Erickson: Yep.

Rachel Budde: Great. So this is New Readers Press Online Learning. I'm just going to very quickly show you what we have to offer currently and what this program entails. So at the top here, I'm going to do a quick dropdown to show you that we have GED courses in all four subjects, HISET courses in all four subjects, pre-HSE courses in all four subjects, as well as TABE courses now in levels E, M, D and A for reading, language and math. So lots and lots of content available.

I'm just going to jump into the platform, because when you get into the platform, what you'll notice is that it's the same for every course. It has the same format. So it's really easy to use one or the other, depending on what you have [ INAUDIBLE ] able to share with you, because she's using many of these courses, how easy it is to navigate, once you kind of know how to navigate it the first time, how easy it is to navigate the other courses.

This is what the course itself looks like. So for our adult ed learners, it's very user-friendly. They can set up a course calendar that allows them to sort of make their own personal plan, where they can follow their knowledge goal points and their progress at the top. There's a full introduction in the course that allows them to learn how to use the platform first.

And then they have a full structured plan that starts with the introduction and a pre-test. You could take that pre-test and design a specific curriculum for the student, or you can let them work through the full structured plan. So as you can see, as students work through, each unit has lessons.

Each lesson is incorporated typically with three components-- a lesson, vocabulary flashcards, and then practice questions. At the end of each unit, there's a unit review. So this is very, very similar to many of the New Readers Press print products that you might be using. If you use our pre-HSE Core Skills books or our HISET or GED skills books, those are also very similar. There's a unit review test.

And within each of the lessons, there's built-in tools. So I'll just kind of show you a little bit of content here as an example. There are some videos built into the content. There's a toolbox in our mathematics courses that includes calculator, formula, periodic table, formula sheets.

All of this is built right into the platform to make it very easy for students to use. If you're working on those college and career readiness skills, there's a highlighter. There's bookmarking. And there's a notes section where they can type in their own notes, so they can take notes as they're learning.

You may notice there's a little audio component here in our lower-level courses that allows you to have the program read aloud.

[video playback]

- Rounding numbers. To round means to change a number to a certain place value so that it is easier to work--

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Rachel Budde: You'll also notice we can switch that to gradual. I hear Eva chuckling.

[video playback]

- Click the image to watch a video about what around number is, why round numbers are used, and how we use place values to round numbers.

[end playback]

Rachel Budde: Hope everyone can hear that OK where you are. The other big component within online learning is that we have this confidence level rating. Now this is great if you're using it really explicitly because the student is self evaluating, using that metacognition, and saying how do I feel about the content, I just learned? As they mark confidence levels, that information is tracked.

And it's available for them to see for themselves, so they can identify where they have low confidence levels. But it's also available on the teacher side, so you can actually identify the lowest confidence levels with certain things in your class or with an individual.

The flash cards are super simple. They've got just like what you make at home, except that they're technologically advanced. You have yes, no, or kind of as your answers. Students can review as they respond. That's also tracked. And so each question that they respond to, it's going to keep track of their responses.

You can even create your own--

[interposing voices]

Rachel Budde: --within this. So if you do reading circles and you want to include your own vocabulary words for that text that you're using, you can actually build your own sets in here. There are even community sets that are available. So if you decide to share something, you might find a community set in one of our courses as well that someone else has built that you can use. I made one with Klingon, which was fun.

The practice questions are much like small quizzes. So you're quickly able to see how the student is performing on those units and individual lessons. You'll can quickly see their scores throughout the entire program. And then tests are the same way where you can get pretty detailed information. We're working on really improving our reporting dashboard. I'm excited for the upcoming changes that will be happening.

But you can keep track of how a student is performing on each individual test. And it shows a way for you to review, not just how they're performing and what they have right or wrong, but also where that falls, so that you can remediate and put them back into the units and lessons that they might need to review.

The other favorite feature I love in here is a search feature. So if I wanted to look for something specific like ratios, if I'm teaching and I know that's my subject matter, I can search for something and quickly find a lesson and a unit that coordinates with my own curriculum in class. So just to share quick overview. Hope that helps.

Randy Erickson: That's great. Thank you.

Rachel Budde: You're welcome.

Randy Erickson: Questions so far for Rachel? Or we move to the next.

Kathy: I have a question.

Randy Erickson: Yes.

Kathy: Rachel, when you're looking at this screen, is this the student's screen or the instructor screen?

Rachel Budde: This is all the students screen. But every instructor has access to a study dashboard, which is the student's screen. So it's kind of like having a teacher edition of the student courses. So you can even build lesson plans, in which I personally have done that for myself. I've gone in. And when I was teaching, I would literally go into this lesson.

And I would use this note section to say, hey number one, we're going to do this activity. And then number two, this is the PDF that I'm including for this. Or I might link to a video or a website that I want to go through with my students, so they can have some interactive online work. And so that's totally-- You can use this in a different way for yourself, but this is exactly what it looks like for the students as well.

Kathy: OK. Thank you.

Rachel Budde: Sure. Great question.

Randy Erickson: OK. Let's move over to Dr. Bowler. You want to share your screen? Or if you want to.

Eva Bowler: Well, let me talk a little bit first maybe. So we're an adult school. I think probably pretty typical in the sense that we have students, at least for the purpose of this conversation, who come in with the goal of finishing high school. And they just usually come in and say, I want to take a GED. That is kind of the default.

And then it's on us to counsel them around if that's actually a likely goal within the next 20 years or so. Or are they better off for us to look at their transcript that they already have from high school, identify the gaps in credits that they have? And we are actually still teaching real classes. So we have teachers in classrooms that teach US History I or that teach algebra.

And so the first reason why I actually got involved with this was we had the core skills booklets when booklets made sense. And then the pandemic came around. And having paper materials made no more sense. And that kind of coincided either with you guys developing this or me becoming aware of it. But that's when I realized that this all these materials actually exist online, and that was stunning.

And then we've kind of bought into this hook, line, and sinker in the sense that the same long list that Rachel just showed you, we basically shelling out for all of these courses as well. We don't have the GED. I just realized that. But the point is that I have such flexibility with this material to serve a huge range of students and their learning needs.

The people who are coming in with really, really low skills, I mean, through ABE, adult basic education level, they are served with the tape the early tape materials. Students that come with kind of medium level, end of ABE, beginning of school do really well with the pre-HSE materials until they move into true high school materials, which are represented to us with either the upper tapes or then the high sit and the GED materials. So that's a stunning range.

And what Rachel was saying earlier is once they learn the system, all these pages are built the same way. So I've actually decided early on that, I don't know about your students, but when there's something called-- Let me just click on it. When there's something called an introduction to the course, students will skip that unless you make them actually go through it.

So course outline, what is flashcards? No students, no self-respecting student would do this unless you make them. And so we built slide decks to go with this where we're forcing students to engage with these pages. So that was our initial reaction to students basically just going to the practice questions right from the start, not even reading, and not taking advantage of all the built in materials that Rachel was just showing off.

So we made these accompanying slide decks where we're forcing students to react. And we're also building in some other materials just for more practice. We have moved away from that as the site got more advanced I feel. So we're not doing that as much anymore, but it was really, really helpful in the beginning and to force students. I love my students. So this sounds worse than it is. But for students to try out the highlighter function, to comment back did I use this? How do I use my flashcards? And have guided practice around the study skills, that is a really rich material to guide that conversation. And for my adult learners, that is a very necessary thing to do.

And I'll compared it with other-- I don't know if you've heard of IXL or other things that they go straight to the content. There's not a lot of conversation around how do I access content? How do I learn? How do I study? How do I remember something? And my adult learners, don't come with those skills. I don't know about other people, but that is executive functioning and study skills is not a strong suit of most people that come in.

So the other way we're using this now. So there's two, I would say two basic ways we're using it, as a standalone material and as a component of courses that we're writing. And it serves both purposes. So it's a very well done, self-contained material like Rachel was just walking people through. And it's leveled in the sense that if somebody did pre-HSE math, and now they're ready, they showed us with the post-test they're ready, now they can go into the let's say the high sit math. Or they can go into the tape D.

It's also really cool, I have to say, as a building block material. And I thought I was going to focus on that more. So we're using Canvas as an LMS at our school. And I've built many a course with the materials out of New Readers Press. I was going to show you a range in the sense that our local community college is Berkeley City College. And we've developed both a math and an English course that is the transition course to the community college.

So we did an articulation pilot with them. And we're back designed our ultimate courses in English and math to be curriculum aligned with the first course that our students are typically placed in. And it just so happens that in math, that's a statistics course that our students get placed in because that's kind of the beginning math course at the books at BCC.

And so we built a course that includes all the statistics that are representation probability components from the New Readers Press materials. And I probably find it very cool, but I'm a curriculum instruction geek, so [ INAUDIBLE ] to everybody else. But I'll just show you. And I'm not going to click on a ton of stuff. I just want to show you how we did this.

So we take advantage of-- This starts early, early, early, right? So let me see if I can get my annotation going on here. So this is the lowest ABE level you can think of. But the way California writes its framework, there is statistics and probability in the kindergarten level. So you can find second grade materials, equivalent to second grade materials, that have measurement and data in them for example.

So we assign the tape E2 entire data unit. That's one of the units. So I don't assign the whole tape E2 in this case because I'm focusing on one specific strand within. So that's my really, really low people. They are already doing work here. I should probably delete my little markers.

Then similarly, they're moving up the levels. Then I'm assigning the M2, the tape M2, and pull out those two units. And we're always deepening the practice opportunities. We have a license for IXL where there's just hundreds more ways to practice with line plots if someone needs it after they've gone through the unit on New Readers Press. So this is a mix and match.

Then we're moving up to D2. It's going to get more serious. There's a statistics unit in the D2. Then we've made it to algebra level. So now we're deep into actually credit bearing high school level work. And then probably my favorite is that there are summative assessments already built in that are standard aligned because the tape is standard aligned, and that are true to life summative assessments for these components. So that's the use that we do for the math course.

And for my English capstone course, we're doing a similar model. So the community college tells us that writing an argumentative essay is the English skill that our students need to have when they come. And we're using different materials, but there's a good chunk in the New Readers Press that is really, really useful for this.

So let me just scroll without making you dizzy. So unit one starts with really simple writing typing sentences and all of that. And then I can literally pull assignments that make sense to deepen to deepen that work and to give them the beautiful sequence of guided practice and independent practice that is built into each of these units. And then I'm going to make you dizzy a little bit. So this goes on for a while. Close your eyes and try to make it to the end.

So here are they now they're writing full essays. And there's a lovely, I'm all fresh and I call it grammar, grammar mechanics that just provides them not just with practice but with explanations, which is really nice. And then there are in the high sit reading and writing is actually a full high sit essay that you can assign that has scoring in it and some comparisons. So that is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

This is for upper end students. This is right before they graduate and go on to college. But I wanted to just show you. I don't know how much time I have, but I'll just show you one more course. No, I'll show you two more courses because I can. One is our lowest. Really all incoming students that really have a hard time adding three numbers together. And so there's two ABE courses that we build around using NRP as one of our building blocks.

And again, I have such a variety of things to choose from here. And I'm really using the assessment opportunities here. So we're getting a baseline by giving them the lowest pre-test there is. And then we're building the course, on top of that. So in this case, they go through the entire course. And then they do some extra practice if they needed out of IXL. We can have a conversation during our panel discussion later while we're doing the IXL piece.

And then at the end, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. There's a lot we end up using the assessments. So if somebody does really, really well on the pre-test and on the units and the practice questions within ERP, I might not even publish the IXL pieces. I can also be very, very intentional. If they struggle with a certain skill, I can give them additional practice in on a different site.

And then there's the post-test. And then I have actual quantitative data that says they are finished with this part. And I can move them off to the next one. So there is post-test tests for the tape E1 separate to E2 separate. And then there is a cumulative test that is truly a summative assessment for that level. So that's really, really nice.

And then I want to show you one more thing, and then I'll let somebody else talk. We've built a bunch of science courses here. And that's truly kind of a Frankenstein type of course. This is Earth and Space Science just for kicks. And here, I'm pulling together an actual textbook where I've done the old fashioned scan in the textbook and do the activities. There are some IXL materials.

And then I'm going to scroll just because the bottom is more interesting for you here. There are NRP practices very specific to certain topics. And that's where the search function comes in nicely that Rachel was searching. So I was looking for something specifically about pollution sustainability of renewable energy and conservation. And there's a pretty nice chunk. It's a series of probably five pages within the science course that you can pull out specifically. It's really a building block opportunity. And then same for the solar system.

One more thing I wanted to show you. Because we have students like I said, who are going DHSE route. So their ultimate goal is to take a high school equivalency test. But we also have students that are just filling in holes on their transcripts. And there's a pretty nifty way you can use. I think it's nifty. You can use the New Readers Press material for that in that the tests are both cumulative for the whole subject.

So here I picked the HSE reading and writing. It doesn't really matter, but there are also individual units that have reviewed tests. So let's say I'm using-- That's it, a social studies. Right? So our students if they have a high school transcript, most often have their world history under their belts because they still were there as freshmen. They often have maybe one semester of US History under their belt because when they dropped out of school, it was junior year.

And so our job is to give them the most direct line to those missing credits and not over overexpose them to stuff. So they don't need to take the whole high sit social studies piece. What they need are specific content materials. So that student I just talked about can seriously skip over unit one. They don't need the credit in World History. They do, however, need the credit let's say in history, or maybe they need the American government credit. Most of our students don't have American government or economics because they dropped out before senior year.

And so then I can do one or two things, which Rachel I think alluded to. I can give them that test specifically to that unit. So my student who needs five American government credits can take the review test for unit three. And if they sail through that, get 100%, life is good. I give them five credits. They move on. I can also then analyze if they don't get a high score, which lessons they should review. Maybe they know the branches of government, but they don't remember, I don't know, the role of the president or something.

So I can really tailor to the students what they need to do because all of our students are on the clock. They want to get out of here as quickly as possible. And I want to be justified in giving them credit. Because we're accredited in the state of California. So I can't just say you're a nice person. Here's your American government credit. But if they can pass the high sit section on American government, then they're good to go.

Because we know how important writing is always then build an essay at the end in where they do some sort of a research paper on government in that case so they don't get their credits just by taking a test. But it's such a good clean standard aligned way of knowing if they know what they need to be considered a high school graduate in that area. That's it.

Randy Erickson: That's it. Wow.

Rachel Budde: That's great. Wow.

Randy Erickson: I have a question for you regarding Canvas. Because K-12 has been doing Canvas for a long time, and now adult education is really coming on strong. How have you guys migrated to Canvas? How is that like? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Eva Bowler: Funny you should ask, Rachel. So initially, we pulled it in as an external URL. Each page in New readers press has a standalone web address. And so you can drop that into Canvas as the assignment, right? I don't know how much people know about building Canvas, but that's an easy way to do it. It's like you just drop the web address, and they click on it, they go there.

Rachel and our instructional technologists and you guys coders actually currently working on a more direct integration where New Readers Press will be one of the clickable things of outside-- what is that called-- outside platforms that are integrated.

Rachel Budde: Yeah. So it's fully integrated, so that you'll be able to actually have the New Reader's Press content within Canvas and just quickly select what you want to put it into your module, as opposed to copying a URL and bringing it into Canvas and putting it into Canvas as a specific hyperlink. So it's just going to be a much easier way to navigate canvas and RPE together.

Eva Bowler: Right. So the integrations in Canvas, if people have built Canvas courses, if it's integrated, you can literally just click and pick the skill off of the site. And it just makes magic, and then somehow it appears right there. The advantage of that is that the links are stable.

Because what we've discovered is that as new readers press is developing their materials, the links change. And so a student would click on the link that used to go to adding unlike fractions with unlike denominators and it took them to the beginning of the math course or something.

Rachel Budde: Yeah, we added some audio pieces to the course. And it made some small changes that we weren't anticipating. And so now this should be a much more seamless approach. And thank you, Eva, for being the pilot program for us to work out this integration because I think it's going to be so beneficial to so many programs.

Eva Bowler: Yeah. And I have to say it's been a pleasure to work with the team because literally they're real life people. I mean, it's really Randy and Rachel. So if you're a user and you run into something, I mean Rachel is there. And they actually do something about it. I feel like, yeah, I texted her this morning.

No but they do. It's not just oh yeah, we'll give it to our coders. Maybe something will happen. She actually jumped in and she's working with my instructional technologist on fixing this. And that I have not experienced with any other program that we have licenses to. So that's pretty awesome.

Randy Erickson: Thank you for that. Other questions from anyone here or online Before we turn it over? OK. We'll turn over to Dr. Gonzales over at Santa Ana College. And I just learned something about them that their department is one of the fastest, or is the fastest growing department in the school, which is pretty--

[interposing voices]

Randy Erickson: We get to hear from her and what they've done in their program. So I'll let you share what you've got Dr. Gonzales and tell us your story.

Adrianna Gonzalez: That need to be formalized. Finishing up that last chapter of my dissertation. I'm at the tail end of this you guys. Thank you so much. That motivates me, Randy. And I will start off with where Eva. Thank you, Eva. That was such a great learning experience with your presentation.

I will start off with where she left off, and that's that you guys are humans. I mean honestly, we have also dealt with just robotic answers and just looking and looking for support. You guys are a phone call away, an email away and you guys are answering our concerns, supporting our teachers all the way through. So thank you. Thank you for that.

And so that leads me to just being grateful for being part of this pilot. Santa Ana College, we are the non-credit side of the college. We have 20,000 students just on the non-credit side. Along with our high said program which is the fastest growing program in the entire college, we have 2,300 students.

We grew about 44% during the pandemic. And when everybody was just trying to just figure out how to get people through the door, let it be just a blessing, the silver lining of the entire situation, but we were having the opposite. Alexis Alegria, who is my co-partner in this, the coordinator of the program and I just couldn't find enough days in the week or hours in the day just to keep afloat with the workflow and registering students and all the amazing things that come with an increasing program.

But with that said, one of the biggest blessings that our department had-- And again our program is just the high sit GED. I also oversee the ABE component of it. So what happens with our students is that we do offer the high sit and GED in English and in Español. So we offer both components of the exam.

And with our English students, many of them come through the ABE pathway just like Eva was describing. And our Spanish will come in through the Spanish ABE. We do have a Spanish pathway that leads our students right into our high sit GED courses. So to that extent, when speaking just the high sit GED component of what we do, is we have seen a growing-- And again it may be the region, but our growing numbers have primarily been in the Spanish arena.

Our English is great. However, we have seen an increase and about 80% of our students are taking the high sit-in Spanish. And our classes are geared in the language that they're taking it. We do have a team of about 20 teachers. And we do offer our classes on Canvas. We offer them in-person labs as well. So when it comes to the usage of the software, our students are using it at home as homework, or they're using it with the teachers to review materials together as a team.

So one of the primary ways that we are using it is in the classroom. The teacher will have access to using these questions as practice questions. So they're reviewing them together. And what's something really fun that we all do as a team here is we will project the question on the screen on our Canvas page or even in the classroom on our Elmo. And we'll have the students, if they're on Canvas or on Zoom, they'll chat into the discussion like what their answer is.

So we'll say OK now question number one. Let's read it together, A, B, C, D. And then they will type into the chat what their answer is. We have one of our teachers, Mr. Ortiz, who's super tech savvy. He presets his material ahead of time. And then he just has the students answer on their Zoom through a quiz. But we do this jointly with the software, something that the students love to do.

So especially as we finish a unit, like let's say US government under the Social Studies exam, we will go on and use specifically those questions. Because as you just described they're very easy to find. They're very easy to access. And again, they're formulated very similar to the exam. So our students love the exercises. They love the interaction. They love the practice. And the fact that they're so they're structured so well and so similar to the actual exam. So that's one aspect of how we've been using it.

The other aspect is that we do give our students access with their passwords and log in, and they work from home. OK? So then from home, we will assign homework. We'll say we just finished the section or this is the homework for tonight. Go home and work on such unit or such lesson. And of course, our teachers are then checking their progress.

So all in all, there was a lapse of time. And our students were so disappointed. Our teachers were so disappointed. Where is the software? We need it, because there was one teacher who specifically used the software in her classes. And she had to go back to using the books, which was not her preference. But now we are back on board and everybody is happy.

I do have something that I like to share. And you may wonder how are you using this with your Spanish students? Well the program is written in English. However we use the Google extension translator. And we can very easily. And look at the magic of this. I mean, we so easily change the language like in a click of a second. Thank you. I was ready to show that, but you're so much faster than I am. And you don't even have to just--

[interposing voices]

Rachel Budde: I apologize. I thought I would jump in and just show how easily it was.

[interposing voices]

Adrianna Gonzalez: Any language. Again if your students are of any other language background, they can do this. And they can do this so easily, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Persian. I mean, you name it. This is such a beauty.

Eva Bowler: Try Latin. Can you do Latin for me just for kicks? Think the HISET in Latin would be fun.

Adrianna Gonzalez: Wouldn't that be phenomenal? And it's just such a gift you guys. Yes, we do use the New Readers Press high sit GED series, and they're wonderful. We love them. They're such great books. However, especially in the pandemic, this was such a great saving grace. I did my math. I'm not a math person. But we did graduate 33% more students the year that we were using this. And so again, we're back on the bandwagon. We're using it again. And we couldn't be more excited.

I do have a testimonial of like three, two minutes. It's so Sochi Rodriguez. She's one of our Spanish students. It is in Spanish. I'm happy to present it to you guys. However, I can simply summarize what she says. And that is that she loved using the software. She used it in preparation of her math exam. She passed that math exam with the help of the software and using it both home and with her teachers.

And she was getting ready to take her reading test. And I am so happy to report to you guys that she took it yesterday. She came back to me today she goes, maestra. She goes, I felt so comfortable taking my reading test yesterday. Cross your fingers that I passed it. I should hear soon from it.

This is a lady who has struggled with the reading test. This is her third time taking it, first time using the software. So she just felt a world of a difference. So I'm happy. And I just had that conversation with her this morning. I'm happy to present her testimonial. And it's in Spanish, but I'm also just happy to summarize what she had to share.

Speaker: Awesome. Quick question, Dr. Gonzalez. You said that you had a 33% higher graduation rate. And this was during the pandemic?

Adrianna Gonzalez: Yes ma'am.

Speaker: That is just incredible. Just kudos. It's awesome.

Adrianna Gonzalez: My very own sister-in-law is dean of a nearby college, not naming names. And she was just like how the world are you doing this? And she's struggling just to get numbers for just general classes. And you're doing this for the high sit? How do we do this? Social media, word of mouth. I came out on local radio stations announcing our programs. And just reaching out to the community is what made all the world of a difference.

And we had students as far Northstar as San Francisco and South San Diego. And again, our school can service anybody over the age of 18 so long as they're California resident with an address, with an address in California, which is I'm sure the case for also Berkeley and other community colleges. But yes, it was a real surprise to us, and we were just like amazed by the results. But we couldn't have done it without this software honestly.

Speaker: Dr. Gonzalez, I would strongly recommend that-- and Randy you guys can do this too-- but having some kind of white paper or write up on this.

Randy Erickson: I didn't tell her to say that.

[interposing voices]

Speaker: Honestly. Because California Department of Education needs to understand the value of this and help the agencies and encourage agencies to understand the value of using these online tools, because it does make such a difference. And what you've done is just incredible within the situation that we've been dealing with the pandemic.

It's just amazing. And I really want you to get the recognition for what you have done and what New Readers press has provided, and the support that they've provided, because nobody else is getting this done. So you're going to be pretty famous.

Adrianna Gonzalez: I appreciate that. Thank you. Yes, no, you know again, it's a team effort know. And I just feel like in a weird way, all the pieces kind of came together and at the point where we were most distressed. And we see the numbers, and we're like wow. Honestly, it's hard to beat just because it was at a point in time where so many colleges were just struggling, including our own college was struggling in other areas. But again, I guess it just all came together at the end.

And honestly working from home, students had access to yet another skill, what is it, another tool at their disposal. So I think it speaks volumes.

Randy Erickson: Eva, did you [ INAUDIBLE ]

Eva Bowler: Yeah, I just had a question. Are your numbers steady now or did they go back down?

Adrianna Gonzalez: It's a really good question. Once they reopened everything, most of our students had to go back to work.

Eva Bowler: That's the experience we too. We actually had an influx in certain students too. Our ESL program had a big influx and our AB student program had a big influx. But those are essential workers. And when they had to go back to work, all of a sudden we lost them again.

[interposing voices]

We had the weirdest data point that we just pulled, which is we're in the middle of a self-study for reaccreditation. So we had to play around with all this data. And what we found was that women who checked Arabic as their dominant language, the increase in enrollment, participation, and persistence during the lockdown and online mostly instruction was through the roof for this subgroup.

And it dropped like off a cliff once we went back in person. And we're right now struggling to come up with programmatic changes to get that group a meaningful experience of education. They will not come to school for a million different reasons. But they're clearly interested in working towards attaining higher educational levels.

So anybody, any ideas? But basically that was the most astounding of all data points that we saw, so specific to the gender and so specific to the home language. And remote learning was the answer.

Adrianna Gonzalez: And I'll tell you, Eva, our community mainly being machista, machismo, I had so many women open up to me during the pandemic and say thank God maestra for the online classes. Because when my husband-- And with all due respect to my own culture. When my husband closes that door to go to work, I open my computer and I log in to my classes. He won't let me go to school, and I would never be able to do what I'm doing now if it weren't because the classes are being offered online. And you have these softwares that I can work from home.

Eva Bowler: Exactly.

Adrianna Gonzalez: And they're doing this conversation when the husband is out to soccer practice. And they're having this conversation with me when the husband is not home.

Eva Bowler: Yeah, exactly right.

Adrianna Gonzalez: And it's something that I'm documenting in my dissertation because it is a true catastrophe that these women, because of ethnic rigors, let it be one ethnic group or another, do find themselves in these situations unfortunately. But fortunately to them, there's now these additional tools that they can use, prepare from home even from their own phone, and be OK and get ahead, something that they've always wanted to do.

Randy Erickson: Wow.

Adrianna Gonzalez: Yeah, isn't that--

[interposing voices]

Adrianna Gonzalez: It breaks my heart, but it's the reality.

Randy Erickson: Yeah, now we've got. We stop at 10 til?

Speaker: 10 minutes.

[interposing voices]

Speaker: 2 o'clock.

Randy Erickson: Oh, OK, OK, good. I know you've got some of your success stories. And before we do that though, I do want to say this we wouldn't be having this right now without OTAN setting the stage for all this, because they led the way to put this all together. And now we're peeling back the onion after the fact. So like you said Adrianna, this was a team effort with everybody coming together.

Adrianna Gonzalez: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, we would have never had the funding to even embark on such a discovery had it not been because of the pilot opportunity.

Eva Bowler: Right. And just to reiterate, it's very difficult to find materials that are low level academic and don't look like they're made for second graders.

Speaker: Yes.

Eva Bowler: And they're insulting to adult learners. Like I said, we have licenses for all kinds of different stuff. All of our students say finally this looks like it's made for me. This is not a little cartoon character running around adding fractions together. Even the video you were showing it has a grown up talking, right?

So if you're looking for materials, and they're really hard to come by, that are made for low skilled adults, this is a real good place to go. It's a respectful, I would say, respectful of the adult learner. And that's really hard to come by.

Adrianna Gonzalez: Right. And it's hard to find stuff that's solid to things that the students need to know for the exam. For example, the scientific process. Are you kidding me? I've dug. I've looked everywhere. And the New Readers Press has such an amazing coverage, step by step with practice questions that I just direct my students to that. And I say you need to know this because everything in the science will be scientific experiments. They take that test. They take those modules or those lessons. And they're like I get it now, teacher.

Eva Bowler: Yeah, we actually built a science course, a 2 and 1/2 credit science course based on that unit.

Adrianna Gonzalez: It's beautiful.

[interposing voices]

Eva Bowler: So there's one in [ INAUDIBLE ] and one HISET and if you combine them, and then you can adjust and supplement with other things. But it makes for a very solid pre-science course. Because like you said, it makes no sense to delve into physics with someone who is still learning about the scientific method and scientific thinking.

And it's not done like you are six years old, and you need to learn this, it's made for people who are adults and have to get the background. So I can reiterate how important that respect level is, it's really, good.

Adrianna Gonzalez: I completely agree with you.

Speaker: Do you want to play those stories?

Adrianna Gonzalez: Oh sure. Yeah, I'd love to. You guys will meet Sochi You guys will meet Sochi here.

Randy Erickson: [ INAUDIBLE ]

Adrianna Gonzalez: Yeah, I just saw her this morning and she was ecstatic. She's like, [speaking spanish]. I'm like, oh my gosh, mija, you got this. So let's meet Sochi. And granted I'm happy to then also answer questions after.

[speaking spanish]. Sochi Rodriguez is one of our high stick students. She is obtaining her HiSec in Spanish. We're going to conduct the interview in Spanish, and she's going to cover a little bit about her experience with the program, and also how the software has helped her, The New Readers Press software. [speaking spanish].

Sochi Rodriguez: [speaking spanish]

Adrianna Gonzalez: [speaking spanish] The New Readers Press software [speaking spanish]. This is where she talks about how [ INAUDIBLE ]

Sochi Rodriguez: [speaking spanish]

Adrianna Gonzalez: [speaking spanish]

Sochi Rodriguez: [speaking spanish]

Adrianna Gonzalez: [speaking spanish]

Sochi Rodriguez: [speaking spanish]

Adrianna Gonzalez: [speaking spanish] And that is my interview with Sochi. In the interview she shares how the software helped her pass her math test as mentioned, how she's now using it to retake reading exam, which she just took yesterday. Ironically enough, it's just all happening again with the timing, and how she and other students in her classroom benefited tremendously.

And she calls it a gift. [speaking spanish], how she was able to receive a password and a username from her instructor to be able to do this from home. And her dream is to become a psychologist or sociology major in the near future at the college.

So there you have it, you guys. Thank you for allowing me. It's such an honor to share a little bit about our students who we endlessly just work so hard for. I appreciate the opportunity to share her story with you all.

Speaker: Thank you.

Randy Erickson: We love [ INAUDIBLE ] Thank you, yeah This is why we're doing this, and it's because of you guys, and everybody here that makes this happen. So thank you. We'll wrap it up with some questions. Anybody here, or online, want to ask some questions before we call it? [ INAUDIBLE ] any questions. I need the wheel, so I can spin the wheel that asks--

OK Kathy, you're on. It's you. No, I'm kidding. Oh look, she turned her camera on right after you said that. But I just want to thank everybody-- Unless you do have a question, Kathy, I didn't mean to interrupt.

Kathy: No, I just want to say thank you so much, everybody, for presenting, because you really are giving me a different framework. We've just been talking about pulling in the pre-HSC core content in the hours. We use the high set materials and really liked them. So it's nice to hear how other programs are having success and implementing.