February 2014

Improving Student Self-Assessment Tools for Dance Training

Submitted by Janaea McAlee on

Dance can be very deceptive; how a movement feels or looks in a mirror rarely provides a clear indication of what is happening in the body. To help students acquire an accurate perception and develop a self-directed process for improving their dance training, I combine a Goals and Assessment Sheet with videotaping at the Midterm and Final. In the Fall of 2013, when it was clear that students didn’t understand how to choose a movement assessment, I added descriptive language and included examples on the Goals and Assessment Sheet for Spring of 2014.

Adjunct Training for Student Sucess

Submitted by Fiona Lihs on

In the last 5 years the chemistry program has made a switch to a fully active learning pedagogy. While we are finding this to be a huge success for the students, it is causing some problems for our instructors. Since this is a novel approach for teaching chemistry classes, most content qualified instructors are not familiar with how to present curriculum in this way.

Make Them Think It Was Their Idea: Using A Student-Generated Rubric To Increase Oral/PowerPoint Presentation Scores

Submitted by Heather Muns on

In my 16 week RDG 091 course, prior to the first group presentation, I spend one or two classes teaching students the oral and format expectations of an oral PowerPoint presentation.  In Fall, 2013, I taught an 8 week version of the RDG 091 course and found that there was limited time to extensively teach these skills prior to their first oral presentation.  I provided them the rubric ahead of time and covered the information as best I could with the time I had.  However, I was very disappointed in the results.

Khan Academy and Improving Placement Scores

Submitted by Becky Baranowski on

Since August 2009, I have had students come and see me (as division chair) to ask about retaking the placement exam to get into a higher course.  During these last 5 years, I have always had the students go to the math videos created by math faculty on the EMCC placement website.  I also told these students to go to www.khanacademy.org and use this free online resource to assist them.  In every case, students placed higher on the placement exam (unfortunately, I did not keep a tally for the number of students this impacted).