Common Assignment/Final

I have just finished my first teaching class of MAT082 at EMCC. It was a nice experience for me. But there is one thing I felt like proposing to the structure of the course. I think there should be a midterm at the middle of the semester that covers half the syllabus (at least) and the exam format should be the same as finals. There are couple of positives in this :

1. Students will be introduced with the exam format

2. If the load of chapters are being reduced by half in the final then the students will have better chance to do good in it.

This CATS is to discuss the difference between the final grade results on my traditional calculus I class vs. the one in a learning community with PHY121. 

Many people do learning communities (see MAT and CPD LC's) to try improve retention in classes.  However, the LC between PHY 121 and MAT 221 has been about trying to improve student understanding of the concepts of physics and calculus and how they fit together.  Retention and success in these coures have been fine which is reason for focus on understanding rather than retention.  From the attached file it can be seen that on the Force Concept Inventory the LC students did better than traditional class even though they had less math preparation for the course.

Objective:  To assist students better understand the process of determining filing status' for tax payer clients in various given scenarios. Students seem to struggle determining filing status and the number of personal exemptions clients may claim.

The purpose of this assessment is to allow students to use their own personal experience to bring the concept to a situation in which they can relate.  It’s my theory that If they can relate themselves to the concept, they can better understand how to make the decisions for others. 

The students in my introductory Illustrator class often struggle with basic design elements when they work on their projects, such as the overall composition, negative space, color spaces and the placement of text. The 3-part poster project gave them the opportunity to not only explore their creative talents but also think of a meaningful design output that conveys a strong and clear message to the audience, using all the technical skills they learned in the course of the semester:

EMCC's ECN faculty have developed and implemented the common ECN212 (Microeconomic Principles) final exam by first defining our discipline-wide Learning Objectives (LO) and then created multiple choice questions for the common final portion across all sections.  Instructors recorded each students' response for each question in an excel spreadsheet and sent to me, who aggregated and analyzed the results.  Overall results were good with 2 more LOs scoring above 80% and 2 fewer scoring below 60%.

In order to compare the performance of those students who had placed directly into ENG101 (placers) with students who had completed ENG091 in order to get into ENG101 (completers), we completed an ENG101 common assignment and assessed an equal number of each group.  We used most of the EMCC Writing Rubric (Focus, Support, Organization, Language Use, and Mechanics--scale of 1 - 4.)  All nine residential ENG faculty took part in the assessment on January 7, 2013 -- we particiapted in norming and then scored papers.

EMCC's ECN faculty have developed and implemented the common ECN211 (Macroeconomic Principles) final exam by first defining our discipline-wide Learning Objectives (LO) and then created multiple choice questions for the common final portion across all sections.  Instructors recorded each students' response for each question in an excel spreadsheet and sent to me, who aggregated and analyzed the results (See attached).  Overall results showed slight improvements in 4 LOs but 2 were worse than the previous semester.

Since Spring 2010, a common assignment has been incorporated into Sociology 101 (Introduction to Sociology). A group of faculty worked on the assignment and rubric with the SAAC co-chairs during Fall 2009. The assignment has been implemented at the end of each semester in the SOC 101 courses (learning outcomes, assignment, and rubric attached below). I have attached some of the comments and results from the instructors from each of the semesters (when information was provided).

The Social, Civic, Global Responsibility Common Assignment was implemented in SOC 130 (Human Sexuality). Students were given the topic of the AIDS epidemic as their focus for this assignment. The rubric was given at the same time as the assignment. Both were discussed and reviewed in class. The focus of the assignment tied in with the rest of the semester as the students organized the EMCC AIDS team, raised money for AIDS awareness, and created slides to be shown outside during the AIDS Day event. The average scores were as follows:



Question 1:  2.67(of 3)

Using a SAAC EZ form completed during spring '12,  this CAT documents improvements based upon suggestions in the original document (see attachment).   For Fall '12, the grading rubric was revised, group formation was made earlier, and a group contract was added to the project based upon the document provided by a finished CAT titled "Increasing Group Accountability with a Contract".  Results: 

Starting in Fall 2009, EMCC's ECN faculty (adjunct and residential) have developed and implemented the common ECN212 (Microeconomic Principles) final exam.  We first started by collaboratively identifiying what we expected all of our students to be able to do as a result of completing our courses, our Learning Objectives (LO) (see attached).  We then created multiple choice questions related to each LO (attached), and we all included the questions as part of our independent final exams.

Starting in Fall 2009, EMCC's ECN faculty have developed and implemented the common ECN211 (Macroeconomic Principles) final exam.  We first started by defining our discpline-wide Learning Objectives (LO) (see attached).  We then created multiple choice questions related to each LO (attached), and we all included the questions as part of our independent final exams.  Instructors recorded each students' response for each question in an excel spreadsheet and sent to me, who aggregated and analzed the results (See attached).

Using SAAC’s EMCC General Education Abilities Matrix the residential librarians assessed 4 key Information Literacy competencies; Framing the Research Question, Accessing Sources, Evaluation of Information Resources and Create Original Work.

The librarians created a rubric  which defined each of the 4 Information Literacy competencies and rated each on a clearly defined 3 level scale. Data was collected from 13 courses for a total of  24 sections.  346 students took part in the study. 

The Counseling Division decided to collaborate to come up with one common final that we could all use to conduct a summative assessment of our students' authentic learning.  This final allows the students to reflect on what they have learned over the semester, how they have applied the information to their everyday lives and how they plan to utilize this information  in the future in an effort to maintain, and/or increase their academic success.