Professor book discussions lead to more effective teaching

Professional development for professors has been shown to improve student outcomes in the classroom, but it often requires a substantial investment of time and resources. Sometimes faculty members will attend a conference and learn something new, but returning to campus and applying it can be a challenge.
Rather than creating another workshop or in-person training, Moorpark Community College, part of the Ventura County Community College District, established a book club of sorts for mathematics professors looking to improve their courses with evidence-based practices.
A Piece of a Larger Puzzle
As a public institution in California, Moorpark College no longer offers remedial courses but must still ensure students are passing their college-level math and English classes.
To help support developmental education reform and completion of transfer-level courses, the California Community Colleges system allocated $64 million in one-time funding to institutions across the state.
Moorpark received $829,920.33 from the system, which has been allocated to several projects including this faculty development intervention, two-way tutor texting and a testing intervention.
How it works: Two dozen faculty participated in the summer 2024 program, committing to read a book and meet virtually to discuss their takeaways. After completing the book, faculty were charged with making changes to their courses, as referenced in the text.
The first book, How to Be a Successful Student: 20 Study Habits on the Science of Learning, was about improving students’ study habits, and the other, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning, focused on instructional design.
The former is less than 200 pages, the latter closer to 500 pages. For reading and applying concepts from the successful student book, each faculty member received a $1,000 stipend, and for the e-learning and instruction book, faculty received $2,500.
The initiative empowered faculty to commit time to their development on their own schedule and off-campus as desired. It also allowed administrators to be intentional with content, ensuring the books are engaging and evidence-based, says Oleg Bespalov, dean of institutional effectiveness and marketing.
The impact: After reading the two books, mathematics professor Claudia Gutierrez implemented introductory and summary pages in her online modules, drawn from the signaling principle to indicate cues for learning. Mathematics professor Rena Weiss redesigned her online quizzes to provide real-time feedback to students as to why their answer was correct or incorrect, rather than just flagging the response right or wrong.
The faculty said they spent between 20 and 30 hours reading the book and an additional 30 to 40 hours applying the intervention to their courses and reflecting on the changes. Each participant submitted a book report of what they learned and what they changed, as well, to meet the stipends’ qualifications.
Course results showed improvements in the classroom after engaging in the book club. Of participating math faculty, those who read both books and implemented strategies from the books in the classroom saw an average 3.4-percentage-point increase in success rates from fall 2023 to fall 2024, Bespalov says. Analysis was limited to faculty teaching the same course in the two terms.
Interestingly, only those who read both books and implemented changes from both saw substantial changes in their DFW rates, which Bespalov theorizes could be related to the amount of time invested in professional development.
One consideration for this change is the degree of intervention and innovation taking place in mathematics courses at Moorpark has also grown in the past few years, with many of the faculty participating in this intervention taking on others as well, Weiss says. Therefore, some of the changes may be reflective of a cocktail of interventions, rather than just the book club.
Instructors were also thankful for the opportunity to learn alongside their peers and try new things at the same time, Bespalov reports.
What’s next: The college plans to offer something similar in the future for other professors, but this time allow faculty within the discipline to screen and select books to ensure the material is relevant and helpful. Some faculty feedback revealed that the text was not always applicable or didn’t resonate with their classes, so allowing for more ownership over the content is a future consideration.
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