January 2018

The EMCC “Ask Me” Team was created to help students with aspects of the enrollment cycle during the first week of classes.The first iteration of the Ask Me Model entailed long trainings for employees in order to master the concepts of different student affairs departments. The “Ask Me” Coordinating Team chose to take a different approach to welcoming students in order to quickly and efficiently give them “just in time answers”. First, the long training sessions were eliminated and volunteers were asked to become Ask Me Guides, not subject matter experts.

The Counseling Division wanted to determine the effectiveness of the CPD150 Career Unit which includes a Career Interest Assessment, Career Research, and Career Planning. In effort to measure the Career Units effectiveness on student learning we created a 5 item Pre/Post Assessment that is modeled after the Critical Inquiry Rubric. The Pre Assessment was administered in the beginning of the Fall 2017 semester with 741 responses and the Post Assessment was administered in November of 2017.

This CATS' purpose was to determine if part of an ACC230 exam resulted in a statistically significant difference between an onine course and a F2F course.  In Fall of 2017, I piloted an ACC230 online class.  I wondered if there would be a major grade/score difference on an Inventory Valuation problem using First-In-First-Out (FIFO) and Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) between the two, different, instructional modalities.  I picked this accounting topic because it was used in two prior CATS (candy example).  My hypothesis was that online students would score lower, because learni

Introductory Chemistry (CHM130) instructors have been using a pre/post test at the beginning and end of the semester in the hope of using the data to determine how conceptual understanding changes as a result of instruction. The original test was not personalized to the curriculum with several topics not even addressed and as a result it was insufficient for detecting student misconceptions. A new Concept Inventory (EMCCi) was developed, thanks to an EMCC learning grant, that was personalized to the CHM130 curriculum.

Writing lab reports is something all students, even strong writers, struggle with.  It is a different style and format to all most other writing that they have experienced before.

College Success Week, held during the fall, is designed to expose students to the many resources available to help them complete their educational goals. EMCC students* indicate they are either unaware or do not take advantage until it’s too late to maximize them as a resource. In an effort to expose students early, one of the activities offered during CSW was the College Success Pyramid Game. The game was designed to increase awareness of resources in a fun, engaging and meaningful way. It was structured similar to the $100,000 Pyramid Game.

For many years now, physics/chemistry faculty require students to journal after each class period (note: there are other faculty on campus who have been journaling for years, as well).  In Fall 2017, a few non-phy/chem faculty incorporated journaling in their classrooms for the first time.  In Spring 2018, during week of accountability, approximately 15 instructors met and discussed best practices in journaling.

I incorporated "One Minute Paper" classroom assessment technique by K. Patricia Cross (1993) into ENG091 classroom learning during the entire semester of Fall 2017.  By far, this class had the most diverse student population that was comprised of: Junior ACE (high school dual students), traditional first year underprepared students, Adult Re-entry students, and students with disability.

One of the biggest challenges for nursing students is to acclimate to the world of the nursing school exam.  Gone are the days of one right answer, the nursing student must learn how to prioritize several correct answers to determine which is the "most" correct. During the Spring 2017, utilization of the Adaptive Quizzing/Learning Resources was highly encouraged but not attached to course points.  In Fall of 2017, the Adaptive Learning activities were attached to 39 of the 600 total course points, leading to a 206% increase in student utilization.

In the 3rd week of PSY 101 students have to complete an assignment critical to college success (locating a research article in an academic journal on a specific topic and providing a summary, APA style reference, & informed opinion).  Recognizing that this task is usually just beyond the students' current abilities, I use extensive scaffolding to support their acquisition of these important skills. Nonetheless, grades on this assignment remain low and approximately 60 % of students are unable to successfully complete the full task.