Meet me in the Virtual Cafe! As I considered challenges that students may be facing during these times, I wanted to create a place in my online classes where students could connect in a non-threatening (non-graded) space much like they would in the hallway or in the physical classroom before and after class and during breaks. I hope that it is successful and helps students to make connections!
Peer Lead Focus and Learning Review
Monitoring student engagement and learning during class & providing feedback is tough due to lack of time. One way to do this is Peer lead learning review; it monitors engagement and provides feedback.
The class was divided into six groups of four students; one student acted as a peer leader. The peer leaders were rotated after 3 weeks, allowing each group member to act as a peer leader.
As a Communications instructor I stress the importance of public speaking skills in many of my courses. To aid students in optimizing their speech presentations, I include class time for small group rehearsal. After a dozen semesters teaching communications I have observed that many students do not engage in the rehearsal activity or they use the dedicated time ineffectively. To optimize the process and motivate students to practice their speeches, I changed the lesson plan in two ways: 1) conduct more than one rehearsal activity for shorter periods of time and 2) break do
Student applicants to the DRS office are not prepared for their eligibility meeting. Students do not actively participate and struggle to provide thoughtful/applicable answers to questions. Some also express a sense of nervousness as if they are on a job interview, which complicates their ability to fully participate in the process.
The purpose of this qualitative study was to evaluate an environment to determine whether or not it encourages interaction among tutors and faculty. Prior to the intervention in Spring 2020, tutor and faculty interaction was low during pre-semester meet-and-greet sessions; the sessions were conducted in a panel format with tutors comprising the audience. The Spring 2020 session, however, was held in a small-group format, and informal feedback was positive. Formal tutor survey results showed that the small groups enabled more flow of conversation as well as deeper connection.
I wanted to see what motivated students to respond to general questions in the 7am Introductory to Psychology class. Was it consumables or extra credits?
Group presentations have always been a part of my classroom, but after watching numerous presentations where students aren’t prepared to present or engaged while viewing the presentation, I realized I needed to make a change. My hope is that by having students present in smaller groups and present the entire slideshow, students will have a better understanding of the material they are presenting and their classmates will pay closer attention to the presentation.
Through conversations with the tutors, a desire was discovered to be better. The tutors know their material very well but wanted to see if there was a way to improve on their delivery style and customer service. I introduced the concept of continuous quality improvement (CQI) which is a culture of never-ending improvement. The assumption is that unless we learn something about what we are doing, we are unlikely to know how to improve it.
Knowledge retention and transfer are at the core of what we do. It is evident that all students learn in different ways. However, if students are asked to DO something in the process of learning they will not only retain the information but rather be able to comprehend how it is applied to the real world. In addition, as the students start to report out to the class the instructor can listen to the responses and clarify or demonstrate the material to ensure long term retention success. For more information not included in this write up, please attachments.
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Helping students find success is the goal of teaching. By adding a short preview assignment allowing students to focus on upcoming larger essay assignments in Canvas, they learn the importance of taking the time to review assignment instructions before starting in, they think about what they're being asked to do, what challenges they might face while working on the asisgnment, what resources they can access for help, and ask specific questions of their instructor. Instructors can immediately respond and clarify or realign student preceptions setting students up for success.
The effectiveness of concept mapping (CM) has been investigated in introductory chemistry students' achievement. The researcher tested the hypothesis which stated that the implementation of concept mapping in teaching introductory chemistry will increase students’' performance. The sample was two sections, experimental group and control group. Both groups had taken a pretest. The experimental group draw CM’s for the units taught. The units included naming, moles, balancing equation, stoichiometry, and molarity. At the end of the semester, the performance
We increased the acceptance rate at the Student Conference 2018 while increasing rigor by providing scaffolding and a revise/resubmit process with support structures. Acceptance rates rose significantly from 28.7% in 2017 to 70% in 2018 with added rigor as expressed by MCCCD faculty who had attended previous conferences. Additionally, for the first time, 9 out of 10 MCCCD colleges participated in the conferences.
Chemistry students are required to think about the atomic nature of matter, while only being able to see the macroscopic level. To help them, we use particle (atomic) level diagrams that rely on different colors, shapes and lines to represent different types of particles, phases, reactions, and temperatures. These models are used throughout their chemistry courses particularly when systems become too complex to describe concisely in text or formulas. A firm grasp of understanding and drawing these diagrams is important for success in the future. However we never dire