A learning objective for Com 230HC is for students “identify, read, synthesize, and discuss information from a current scholarly, peer reviewed journal article.” Three topics being in Communication, and one topic of choice, in their area of interest.
EMCC's Honors Department designed the first Exposition Fair to allow all students to showcase their work in different formats including roundtables for students to discuss their work in progress, poster displays, oral presentations and interactive displays. David Weaver was our keynote speaker and responses from participant surveys evaluating the Exposition Fair were overwhelmingly positive! Almost two-thirds of survey participants (N=90) reported that they did not know about the Makerspace and strongly agreed that they liked the interactive nature of the fair as well as the var
Statistics elicit overall student angst, which affects grades, attitude, attrition and learning. Although students attended tutoring, were allowed to re-do homework and engaged in interactive classroom experiences, PSY 230 course retention rate remained at 25%. I used a different pedagogical technique this semester - Mastery Learning - which was used successfully in K-12 grades. Rather than a traditional letter grade or percentage on assignments, students received "not yet" grades and instructor feedback. Resubmissions were accepted as many times as necessary to reach mastery.
There were some incidents on campus last semester where students were not comfortable taking care of their personal space. We have found that students do not feel empowered to make decisions and share their thoughts. In order to be successful in life, students need the tools to be able to express themselves confidently, even if they are uncomfortable due to pressure and concerns of rejection. At times, social categories impact how much personal power we have and how we use it. This includes, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, religion, etc.
After completing midterm evaluations, students expressed a desire to have less lecture and more activities. Therefore, I designed and implemented a CATS to assess different approaches to learning in my COM 100 courses (5 sections) over a two-week experimental period. I compared a traditional lecture based approach (control group – 1 section), balanced lecture and interactive learning approach (experimental group 2 sections), and completely interactive learning approach with no lecture (experimental group 2 sections).
A prerequisite to physics is MAT182. Students need to know law of sine/cosine, and vector concepts from trig to be successful in physics. In the past, I would spend a lot of time classify triangles (SSS, ASA, etc) to help students know which "law" to use, and this was done at the end of the semester. I did not spend time using law of sine/cosine with vector applications . Students typically scored a low B on law of sine/cosine problems. In F17, I taught the "laws" and incorporated vectors in week 4 to show students real life applications.
Sociology courses have topics that are taboo, disturbing, offensive and controversial. SOC 212 (Gender and Society) students read "If Men Could Menstruate" by Gloria Steinem. Students tend to get defensive and miss the important point on power in society. On average 50% of the students would be defensive in the discussion responses and miss the importance of the article. I decided to rewrite the directions for the assignment so that students would focus on critically thinking as sociologists.
While working in classroom, I found that students gravitated towards friends to create their team or learning community. This behavior created "clicky" groups in the classroom and I noticed silos of learning taking place. What I decided to implement in my classroom was randomizing the groups with Popsicle sticks. Each time we had a learning activity I used these sticks (that had a student name per stick) to randomly place the students into groups.
We specifically investigated how we can integrate creativity more effectively in the classroom for the benefit of both students and faculty. Our investigation included: reading Creative Confidence, learning more about Design Thinking challenges, locating and sharing creativity resources, using creativity to personally address one teaching challenge, and implementing at least one actitivty/lesson/strategy that we deveop using creativity to at least one class this semester.
Students kept an Excavation Journal through the five weeks of ENH251: Mythology. They were advised to use their journal to record: observations, notes, questions, ideas, images, sketches, maps and artifacts in addition to the answers to the various Dig Sheets. Each Dig Sheet focuses on a particular area of world mythology, engaging the student in reflective thinking about assigned readings while also encouraging their use of creativity.
In my Ethics course I assigned students a criminal justice current events assignment. This was a written report in which students were given the choice of choosing an incident of unethical conduct. I found that about half of the students did not have a clear comprehension of what was involved and why it was a problem. Many students were not able to answer basic questions. Three semesters ago I changed the assignment to include an oral presentation in class.
I had nine students who were disengaged in group discussions. They had not actively participated in our class discussions by: being active, speaking up, volunteering for activities, or asking or answering questions.
To help, I used nine small candy bars, and taped them to the bottom of these student's desk. Students discussed nine key points in small groups. This way every student was actively involved in the learning of the material. After, students had to reach under their desk, and if they had a chocolate bar they were the chosen ones to share.
I discovered:
During the Spring 2017 semester, our Counseling Division held a retreat with all our residential and adjunct faculty. At our retreat, we provided a catered lunch and shared best practices from our CPD 150 courses. We discussed our OER Canvas curriculum for our CPD 150 classes. We have five modules in Canvas for our CPD 150 courses: College Resources, Time and Planning, Personal Development, Study Skills, and College and Careers. We divided our division faculty into five groups, and assigned each group a module from Canvas. Each group evaluated their modul
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Need: Students are required to use at least 5 credible sources, but have struggled to identify and use them.
Enhancement (see esp. #2):
(1) Instruction: Credible sources meet all 3 criteria: (a) written by a named [with rare exceptions] authority on the subject under discussion; (b) timely [which usually, but not always, means recent]; (c) has minimal bias [completely objective sources don't exist].
(2) Template: Students type into/complete the attached Word document, "Research Packet." (10 points of speech)
To combat students being overly concerned with page length and the number of quotes/paraphrases when writing research papers, I decided to take the paper out of the equation. For this research project, students use the research process to determine how realistic the science/technology is in a selected Marvel film. By removing the paper, the students are able to focus on and practice the various steps in the research process, such as crafting a research proposal, annotated bibliography and outline.