Reading is a critical skill for students. That is why Reading is one of our institutional student learning outcomes. Many of us struggle with how to teach Reading to college students. If they can’t read, they wouldn’t be in college, right? Well, the issue is not this simple.
As instructors, we engage with students to increase their Reading skills regardless of their skill level. We attempt to create assignments allowing students to demonstrate every aspect of Reading (Comprehension, Genres, Relationship to Text, Analysis, Interpretation, Reader’s Voice). We strive to use the AAC&U Reading Rubric to assess Reading skills. If students are not improving Reading skills or we are not providing students opportunities to demonstrate Reading skills, our assessments are meaningless.
The Office of Assessment held professional development workshop bringing Dr. Chris Hakala to UAPB to facilitate a half-day workshops on “How to teach and assess college students’ reading skills.” Dr. Hakala is Director for the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship at Springfield College. Dr. Hakala has 20 years of experience in the fields of reading comprehension, teaching and learning, faculty development, and assessment. He has provided workshops to dozens of colleges and universities. Learning objectives for the workshop are…
a. Make use of what we know about how students read to maximize effort;
b. Meet the needs of the assigned learning experience; and
c. Have a prompt that is driving students towards meeting the learning objectives as defined and measured by the AAC&U Value Reading Rubric