November 2012

In the past I have used a program call MyMathLab (or MathXL) to test students understanding of mathematical concepts.  One of the frustrations I always had was that students could use a "help me solve this" or "view an example" help tool to walk them through their assignments, but they never learned.  This resulted in very high homework scores, but not as good of scores on the exams.  For example, in Spring 2011, my students had a class average of 93.8% on the homework and 88% on the quizzes.  However, their midterm average was only 80.7% and the final exam average was o

The Social, Civic, and Global Responsibility assignment was given to my EDU222 hybrid course, with disappointing results. The average score was a 10.6 out of 15 (71%). Knowing that I would be giving the same assignment to my EDU230 hybrid course, I consulted with others who had better results. This led to the creation of the following guides that students were mandated to use and attach to their final paper:

Student reflection is an integral aspect of effective Service Learning practices and should demonstrate both Academic and Affective learning. In the past I used student-self-directed reflection, with minimal guidance or structure. In order to better assess SCGR proficiency, I (1) provided the students the rubrics for this ability, (2) reviewed them carefully, and (3) required adherence to the criteria in the presentation of Informative Speeches, adding the SCGR criteria to the evaluation instrument as part of the content grade.