Face to Face

In Fall 2013, I taught two calculus courses.  One of them is linked with Physics (a learning community) and another one is in the traditional format.  In the traditional format, calculus is a prerequisite for PHY121.  With the learning community, students are able to take both MAT220 and PHY121 in the same semester.  The learning community students have the advantage of seeing the applications of calculus in the same semester while the traditional students will see the applications a semester later.      

It was noted that one thing many scientists (and others) have in common is a love of puzzles.  They require critical thinking skills and many require a scientific inquiry type approach to solve.  We decided to see if encouraging our students to attempt a number of puzzles throughout the semester, for extra credit, would enhance their critical thinking skills or at least encourage them to start attempting more puzzles which may be have beneficial in the long run.

Sociology 130, Human Sexuality, focuses on the social, cultural, and institutional contributions to human sexuality. Throughout the semester, students address how society constructs expectations and limitations on sexuality. The last assignment is to create a sexual rights document and to discuss the document with your classmates. The sexual rights document will be assessed through a rubric which focuses on research, sociological imagination, and critical thinking. The SOC 130 online course will be piloted in Spring 2014.

Economics is known for being a difficult subject, but perhaps what students dread most about the class is graphing.  There is not a lot of multiple choice questions in my class- students are expected to graph routinely on bi-weekly quizzes.  In order to support student development with their graphing abilities,  last year I introduced mini-whiteboards as a way to get students practicing graphing as a class warm-up activity, focusing material from the previous class.

Since Fall 2003, a textbook was used in MAT220 (caculus I).  For the last 4 years, handouts were created to supplement the textbook.  This semester, students use only a workbook that I created.  The purpose of this assessment is to document my observations in the level of engagement of students from using textbook only, slowly incorporating worksheets, to full implementation of a workbook.   Most math textbooks are not designed to engage students, thus it was difficult to do so.

One learning objective for Com 100 is to have students explain the essential elements of communication using representative communication models. In a F2F setting this can be demonstrated easily by putting the essential elements of a model on the whiteboard and  having students stand by the elements such as the “sender” and “receiver” element. They next model the  elements in an interactive process.  This semester, I assigned students the same assignment,  to diagram a recent conversation they had using a model of communication.

In my Intro to Human Com classes, students respond well to the "small-talks" that I assign throughout the course. These talks are 1-2 minute informal speeches that students deliver in front of the class. Explaining their personality test results, reporting on their cultural visits, and relating active listening scenarios are a few examples of the small-talk assignments.

5 -7 minutes

Maria Cecilia Rosales

I use what I call Dictation- Reflection to assess gramatical concepts, listening comprehension and writing skills.

I dictate ten conjugated verb forms from the active vocabulary list for the chapter in question (bailamos, trabajan, etc). Students are asked to:

1-      Write down the conjugated verb form I dictate (bailamos)

2-      Identify the infinitive form of that verb (bailar)

A survey was completed (N=147) for the One Billion Rising Event. This is a sample of the percentages for responses of Agree and Strongly Agree.  Please see attachment. (1). One purpose of this event was to raise awareness of the global issue of violence against women. My understanding of the global issue of violence against women is greater after attending this event. 88% (2). Another purpose of this event was to encourage a better understanding of how individual action can bring about change in the larger culture and in personal lives.

I have been using the "ticket in" approach to check comprehension & preparedness (as well as take attendance) for several years. Students know they will be held accountable for completing the at-home readings with their ticket in. Additionally, students can ask question that they had about the readings for me to address in class on their ticket-in. It has proven to be a low stakes, high efficiency assessment of readiness to learn, as well as clarifying information they encounter between class sessions.

Honors students in my Communication courses are required to propose and complete a Service Learning project. Documentation of Cognitive & Affective learning achievement and Critical Thinking skills are to be formally evidenced in a presentation. To promote deeper learning and thinking throughout the semester as the students engage in their projects, I expounded the Project Proposal to include their expected learning outcomes and thinking processes.  Throughout the semester students referred to their proposa

During finals week class time, SOC 212 (Gender and Society) students create a public service announcement. The instructions given are "Based on the information you learned on gender and society, what would you focus on to promote social change? You are going to create a two minute Public Service Announcement to share with the class." The goal of this assessment is to see which topic is chosen as most important to create a public service announcement. Students were required to choose one topic; some chose more than one to discuss.

Students continuously give us positive feedback on campus events. Love Your Body Week is assessed with a survey for the week long series of events. Self reflection questions focus on learning from the event, interest in going to other eventes, interest in learning about other social issues, interest in being active in the community, feeling open minded, and having resources on the social issues. If you examine the attachments, you will see results for the presentations, activitie,s and the outdoor event.

I administered a four question Pre-Post test in Spring 2012, Fall 2012 and Spring 2013.  The Pre-Post test is attached for your reference. In Sp12 and Fa12, students showed great improvement from Pre to Post test, however in Sp13, the percentage improvement from pre to post test dropped drastically.  Overall scores on the post test for 2012 were very high (see attached) and for Sp13 were low.  There were two main differences from last fall to this spring that contributed to the lower Pre-Post test results.

Tallow sculpturing is a culinary expression of food art dating back to the 18th century. This is a medium of food artistry which is mostly classified as one of the lost arts in the culinary profession.