Face to Face

The Academic Success Center (ASC) provides drop-in person tutoring services for mathematics courses at Estrella. On occassion, the ASC holds study sessions for students in nearby classrooms for a more focused, enclosed tutoring session to support students with rigorous topics or upcoming exam reviews. Starting this semester, the sections of College Algebra decided to conduct two major exams and a final based on the course curriculum of MAT151. To help support this endeavor, the tutors of the ASC were prepared to assist students with these major exams. 

The program was held during a five week summer session. Twelve students met Monday through Thursday for Math 151 College Algebra/Functions, followed by one hour of tutoring. Students also met Monday through Wednesday for CPD115, Creating College Success in STEM. Every Thursday, students had the opportunity to partake in hands-on STEM workshops and programs, meet current and/or former STEM students, meet with different community professionals to explore the different careers in STEM, and learn about the different supportive programs, such as undergraduate internships.

Helping students find success is the goal of teaching. By adding a short preview assignment allowing students to focus on upcoming larger essay assignments in Canvas, they learn the importance of taking the time to review assignment instructions before starting in, they think about what they're being asked to do, what challenges they might face while working on the asisgnment, what resources they can access for help, and ask specific questions of their instructor. Instructors can immediately respond and clarify or realign student preceptions setting students up for success.

One of the student learning outcomes of this class is to discuss current industry events. It is difficult to assess discussing events and generally the whole class doesn't participate in discussions equally. By creating a writing assignment to discuss and analyze events I gained a strong means to measure an SLO and both writing and critical thinking. The assignment was a good way to start off the class and to get student engagement for the day.

I am hoping that having this extra practice and group work in the long run strengthens not only their ability to do derivatives but also their algebra skills. Unfortuantely I do not have enough time in one semester to do this in every topic we cover, so I am hoping to come up with more creative ways to have them do this practice outside of class, that does not make them complain to me that I am giving them too much homework. 

The purpose of this CATS is to really dive into one concept and try to figure out what students don't understand about basic integration.  Why is everything u-sub?  After each WU, I will use the information to write another WU to go further into the issues students are having.  The goal is to come up with a set of questions/problems that students have to do which "attack" a concept from multiple directions.  If I can cover the concept in many different ways and variations, I hope to fill any and most gaps students may have in their understanding of basic integration.  

Please note:  From speaking with faculty in the prerequisite coureses, they are incorporating reviews of rules of exponents and fractions.  But, at what detail and how, I am unsure.  Hopefully with the creation of SLOs and having Guided Pathways, we can come up with some activities and best practices as a group to help students understand these two concepts better.  I am not happy with the idea of just accepting that students will not be able to integrate a fractional problem that requires rules of exponents.  There has to be something out there to help our students be successful with this.

EMCC has determined that communication is important and thus, included this skill on the EMCC General Education Abilities Matrix.  CIS105 has a module in which PowerPoint is taught, primarily focusing on the technological side of creating a presentation and how to incoporate the different technological aspects of the program.  Time was spent discussing not only the technology of presentations, but the delivery side as well incorporating the EMCC matric indicators.  Based upon the results of the mid-term presentation data, instruction/feedback will continue on the importance of verbal commun