Project

I ran MAT142 Online in F13, which is the first time our division has run an online course  Of the 31 who started the class, 20 will pass (with 1 depending on the final project score).  We had 5 written projects, and at the end of each project, I asked students to do a grade check which required them to give feedback on their progress and the course as a whole.  There were 3 common themes that I saw from the responses:

1)  Students felt projects did not reflect the learning they'd done in notes and homework.

Sociology 130, Human Sexuality, focuses on the social, cultural, and institutional contributions to human sexuality. Throughout the semester, students address how society constructs expectations and limitations on sexuality. The last assignment is to create a sexual rights document and to discuss the document with your classmates. The sexual rights document will be assessed through a rubric which focuses on research, sociological imagination, and critical thinking. The SOC 130 online course will be piloted in Spring 2014.

Since Fall 2003, a textbook was used in MAT220 (caculus I).  For the last 4 years, handouts were created to supplement the textbook.  This semester, students use only a workbook that I created.  The purpose of this assessment is to document my observations in the level of engagement of students from using textbook only, slowly incorporating worksheets, to full implementation of a workbook.   Most math textbooks are not designed to engage students, thus it was difficult to do so.

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.

The first project in my EDU classes each semester is a student investigation into a hot topic in the education field. Students must submit a Ppt and then present on the topic, using the Ppt as their audio-visual aide. Their grade is a combination of assessing their presentation and their hard-copy Ppts. To grade their hard copies, I use a Ppt Rubric (see attachmed). Historically the lowest score on the rubric has been "References" where they must accurately cite at least two credible references. The average score on this has been 2.0 out of 5 points.

Tallow sculpturing is a culinary expression of food art dating back to the 18th century. This is a medium of food artistry which is mostly classified as one of the lost arts in the culinary profession.

 After viewing a powerpoint on scale as a design principle, and an in class discussion students are asked to create collages that explore the relationship between scale and meaning. The resulting collages should be representational but illustrate a world in which the normal relationships between things have been altered through changes in scale. The resulting collages are often whimsical, but capable of illustrating a more sophisticated understanding of the way we use scale daily to navigate the world, create systems of order, and define self.

I made my course a hybrid like course, where students could learn online as well as in the class w some assignments. Here is a sample from a project given. Not your usual PED course.

In order to get students more personally involved in the learning process, students are given the responsibility of choosing four debate topics that are then used to formulate the questions used in the formal debates in the course.

Through a combination of guided discussion and voting students decide as a group what they will research and debate.

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:

Business students have expressed difficulty understanding the accounting rules regarding debits (DRs) and credits (CRs) .  Therefore, during Fall 12, ACC111 class,  one of the honor students to created, for their honors project, a 3 min video presenting the 7 rules of DRs & Crs.   By creating the short video, students would:

a)display their understanding of the 7 rules of DRs & CRs;

b)learn a new skill (e.g. how to create a short and simple video about a comlicated topic);

This is a final assessment of RDG 081, 091 and CRE 101.  The common elements included are a short essay (3-5 pages), long essay (5-7 pages), discussion board postings responding to the readings, letter to the reader, and self-assessment.  Other artifacts such as power points, prezis, games based on the books, are included with a rationale and rubric for inclusion.

The Humannequin Project includes an assessment each year which varies by topic. The 2013 assessment, rubric, and student scoresheet are attached. Each questions always focuses on Bloom's Taxonomy: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze,  Evaluate and Create.  Questions 4 and 6 have lower averages. These two areas need to be improved for the 2014 project. UPDATE: For 2014, the topic for the project was gender and language.

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.

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: