Colleague

Many might agree that hiring new faculty is one of the most important faculty responsibilities. As hiring manager for the 2016/2017 Biology Faculty search, I used my past experience and best practices from the FCRRC to plan and implement specific strategies to focus on teaching to hire the best candidate for the position: removal of PhD in desired qualifications, post the position longer than minimum requirement, separate the micro teach from the interview, conduct an assessment of the process.

Several years ago, Holly Dison, math faculty, found a calculus concept pre-post test to give in our MAT22X courses.  This pre-post exam was copyrighted by another college, but approval was given to use it in our classes as long as we did not share the results with anyone.  The exam consisted of 22 multiple choice questions.  Each question is designed to see if students understand the CONCEPT; the problems are not procedural.  Each multiple choice option is designed to be common misconceptions.

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:

Math faculty have developed a MAT091 complete common final exam to be required to be given by adjuncts and as an option for full time faculty.  Since the first implementation, the questions have been reviewed and changes have been made as necessary.  One of the purposes of the common final is to give instructors guidance on the competencies that are most important.  Another purpose is to identify where students are doing well and also not so well so that we as instructors can adjust our teaching.  Each instructor receives their individual reports as well so they can comp

Starting in Fall 2013 math faculty worked on developing a complete common final exam to be required to be given by adjuncts and as an option for full time faculty.  The first semester that it was widely used was Spring 2014 Since the first implementation, the questions have been reviewed and changes have been made as necessary.  One of the purposes of the common final is to give instructors guidance on the competencies that are most important.  Another purpose is to identify where students are doing well and also not so well so that we as instructors can adjust our teaching.&

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

Abstract:  Research has demonstrated that a significant proportion of community college students will not persist to degree completion. Online students may be particularly at-risk. Self-efficacy, perceived value of the curriculum, and certain demographic variables have been identified as important in both retention and persistence. We will measure these variables four times during a semester in a series of online college classes.

Since Fall 2014 , the calculus instructors have been working on creating common questions to have on the final exam for calculus I.  Faculty (both full and part time) meet to discuss pedagogy, common questions and creation of a pre-post test.  The common questions are the first half of our final exam with the 2nd half written by each individual faculty member.  Each semester, the questions are looked over and kept or modified.  The purpose of the common questions is to make sure all calculus faculty are covering "core" topics in MAT22X.

ACC111, Accounting Principles I was new to the online format in the Spring of 2017.  This assessment measured student academic performance of those in the online course versus their counterparts in the face-to-face course of the following semester (I did not teach a F2F, 16-week session of this course in S2017).  Scores of the final course grades were compared to notate any difference in academic achievement/mastery.  

Results:

ONLINE, 16-Week, SP2017 - the class average of the final score was 82.68%

Learning Community (LC) faculty have been saying for 6 years that the main focus on the LC is to help students in future STEM courses.  Majoring in a STEM field is difficult; math is a barrier for most students.  Approximately 20% of community college students start as a STEM major with 69% of them changing it to non-STEM.  The LC course is designed to help students be successful STEM students and truly understand how math and physics are intertwined.  So, student grades were analyzed from fall 2010 - spring 2016.  Students that went through the LC vs.