In my hybrid course, more time is needed to ensure that students have time to practive oral presentations, to receive peer feedback, and to get peer reviews on written asssignments. Initially, I would explain the assignment in-class and students would submit it online. If we had time, we would share briefly (2-3 minutes per student). The results were rushed work with only average results.
In my ESL Informal Conversation class, students were introduced to 12 new slang phrases regarding "taking a vacation." I tested students on their ability to use those words by providing a "fill-in the blank activity." I was not happy with the results.
Using Canvas Discussions is a good way to use higher order thinking skills and improve communication as our students justify their answers and question others. In Fall 2013, all three of my hybrid classes had weekly discussions that enriched our content. However, the quality of the discussions was somewhat lacking. Mid semester, I instituted rubrics to help guide and measure their posts. For a 15 point discussion, the rubrics were as follows:
I assign a Career Exploration Project (attached) for my engineering students to learn about engineering disciplines, careers, and professional societies. They do research, write a report, and present their findings to the class. They capture the basics of the field and information about the professional societies, but I feel there is room for improvement, especially with professional societies and their benefits.
In Fall 2013, I piloted a video reflection assignment in the Sociology courses.
This assignment is for the online version of STO/HUM292 that has not been launched yet.
This is a performance-based class, so students are required to perform a story for their final exam. Students will record themsevles and then upload for grading. There is a set rubric students are to follow in order to demonstrate effective storytelling techniques and best practices.
This assignment is for the online version of HUM108 that has not been launched yet.
After learning about murals, the students are to demonstrate what they learned by creating their own mural. The mural must mimic the murals we learned about in the unit; it should be aesthetically pleasing, colorful, crowded and have a political, religious and/or personal message to impart. This assignment will allow students to demonstrate and solidify what they have learned by doing a kinesthetic and personally meaningful activity.
Programming assignments traditionally involve some problem analysis, algorithm design, and typing/testing code. While designing a new Level II course, I wanted to provide for a different way of thinking about problems and to integrate real-world context. I developed a two-part assignment on secure coding for database applications, specifically teaching students about SQL-injection attacks and how to defend against them. Instead of giving students a paragraph-long program description, I provided a couple of articles and links.
After reading chapter 4, Introduction to Active Directory and Account Management, students will install Active Directory and Delegate controls through web-based labs. The labs will walk them through multiple steps including installation, configuration and the administration of elements within Active Directory.
One learning objective for Com 100 is to have students explain the essential elements of communication using representative communication models. In a F2F setting this can be demonstrated easily by putting the essential elements of a model on the whiteboard and having students stand by the elements such as the “sender” and “receiver” element. They next model the elements in an interactive process. This semester, I assigned students the same assignment, to diagram a recent conversation they had using a model of communication.
In another assessment, the gender issues survey incorporated in SOC 212 as a pre and post survey is discussed. The focus is on similarities and differences between the pre and post results. This assessment focuses on the post survey as a comparison between hybrid and online. A spreadsheet is attached with the results for Spring 2013. The similarities between the hybrid and online courses include 1. majority of students indicate that most of the listed gender issues are important and very important (higher end of scale) 2.
Faculty librarians from all of the Maricopa Community Colleges cooperatively staff a real-time instant messaging service called Ask-a-Librarian (Ask). Through the Ask service, these librarians assist students from all colleges with research during the day and contract with a cooperative of librarians for additional support 24/7/365. A district-wide committee of librarians oversees the service.
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.
Having taught MAT151 (College Algebra) in both Fall 2011 and Spring 2012, I noticed that a fair number of students were having difficulty understanding the concept of a function. Many failed to recognize how a function's output value varies in a predictable way based on changes to its input value, and most had a hard time connecting the geometric, tabular, verbal and equation representations of a function. Developing this understanding is critical to student success in MAT151 and subsequent math classes.