Samuel Mariani

The issue of student retention and persistence has continued to grow in importance throughout the history of higher education in our country. Early studies (Astin, 1977) focused on the characteristics of those students who did not persist and such studies were used as evidence for higher admissions standards or more quality control of recruitment. However, beginning the 1970's the research began to focus on what were the reasons students remained enrolled and how colleges and universities could make changes or develop programs which would increase the retention of their students.

For the most part, our students are wonderful young people and our experience with them is/ if we do a good job - positive and rewarding. Everyone, however, has occasional problems, and a few issues can eat up enomrous amounts of time and energy. *Maintain good documentation of things such as attendance, work submitted, copies of communications with students. *Make your expectations clear and follow your own policies.

My opinion one type of evaluation is Authentic Assessment. Is that it values the thinking behind work, the process, as much as the finished product. I use authentic assessment on lab time. The courses that I teach are four weeks and time management is really at the top of my priorities but, when it comes to the point of lab performance assessment is the key. I will like to use more the authentic assessment it in the future, may be on a different course with more time.

How do you differentiated instruction in your classroom?

In your opinion, what students benefit the most from differentiated instruction? In my opinion I truly believe that all students will benefit from differentiated instruction. I also understand that not only the student but, also the instructor (teacher) will benefit from it. “It’s a win win situation”.

"Research has shown that students with learning disabilities are of average or above intelligence. They are challenged in their learning as a result of their disability causing them problems with decoding and recoding learning materials."

By introducing a smaller number of new words each time the students become familiar with and understand the words easier.

Students that hesitate to speak up in large class settings are more comfortable speaking up and participating in small group discussion.

"Eye contact is looking at each student long enough to make a connection, but not so long that they start to feel uncomfortable. The best time frame for this is 2-3 seconds."

"This learning style is the basis of many learning requirements for career college students. It involves eye, hand, and body coordination. This learning style is often integrated into the other three major learning style categories".