Innovative, Evidence-Based Student Success Strategies Developed by Brandman's Online Writing and Math Community

The intended audience for this presentation will be higher education professionals interested in pedagogies and best practices of an online writing support platform for adult learners. These professionals may consist of academic deans, faculty members, tutoring center directors, student service directors, disability services directors, IT directors, and academic advisors. This session will address innovative, evidence-based student success strategies developed by Brandman University's Online Writing and Math Community (OWMC).
The Online Writing and Math Community (OWMC) at Brandman University is grounded in an engaged pedagogy called Instructional Design for Engaged Adult Learning (iDEAL). Putting iDEAL into practice, the OWMC fosters student success by providing fully online writing support for non-traditional, adult learners in a distributed campus†setting. The OWMC connects students, professional tutors, and faculty members through Brandman's website, with offerings including online and recorded workshops, online tutoring and office hours, asynchronous email tutoring, online orientations, and recorded tutorials. The OWMC's innovative approach to teaching writing in a collaborative, online learning community may be a model for other colleges and universities.
Furthermore, professional tutoring provided by Brandman's OWMC appears to be an important factor in at-risk student success. The OWMC employs McCann Associates' MyAccess!Æ technology to automatically score both diagnostic and final student essays for select freshman English courses. Three years of MyAccess!Æ data, collected from Fall 2012 to Fall 2014, indicates that at-risk students who participate in online tutoring receive consistently higher MyAccess!Æ student success (percentage of writing improvement) scores than students who do not engage in tutoring. During this time period, the mean score for at-risk students was an average of 32% higher than the score for the total sample.
Grounded in iDEAL pedagogy and evidenced by MyAccess!Æ data, Brandman's OWMC is demonstrating that supporting at-risk adult learners by providing online writing support may be an important best practice contributing to student success in academic courses. The OWMC's mission is to foster adult learner's success at Brandman University and beyond.
Higher education professionals interested in pedagogies and best practices of an online writing support platform for adult learners will be provided with a tour and then asked to engage in freewriting and small group discussions. Small group discussions will focus on the OWMC's model for providing fully online writing support, which is grounded in iDEAL pedagogy and evidenced by student success data gathered using McCann Associates' MyAccess!Æ online writing analysis technology. In a three-year study, MyAccess!Æ writing analysis data shows that at-risk students who participate in online tutoring receive consistently higher student success (percentage of writing improvement) scores than students who do not engage in tutoring. Brandman University's Online Writing and Math Community fosters effective communication, which contributes to students' success in academia and in all facets of their lives.