Osmosis and the movement of water is a common theme in biology courses. Students first learn the concept in General Biology (Bio181/Bio156), then students have to apply it to human physiology in Anatomy and Physiology (Bio 201/202). Students have a difficult time understanding this concept as evidenced by only 39% correctly answering a question about osmosis in the kidney on the unit exam.
Students continually ask if they can use notes on an exam. My answer is always the same, NO! Notes do not help, they will cause more harm than good because students take longer trying to find the solution or how to do the problem. I decided on the 4th exam in my statistics class I was going to allow them to use notes to see if the notes truly do help them. The exam was over hypothesis tests and everything from forming the test to deciding which test is best and calculating the statistic, getting a p-value and forming a conclusion. There is quite a lot on the exam.
After discussing the positive effects of exercise on student learning with EMCC's fitness and wellness director, Lyle Bartlett, I employed a rigorous walking schedule for a minimum of 15 minutes at the beginning of class in one of my statistics courses while another section served as the control group where no class exercise took place. Less than 15% of students in both groups self-reported exercising more than two times per week making groups comparable. I used an independent samples t-test to compare mean quiz scores from the treatment (e.g., those who walked) and control groups.
For this CATS, I wanted to look at if there is any difference in test scores between students who quickly complete an online study tool prior to the exam and students who take hours or days to complete the same study tool. I gave my introductory Psychology students over a week to complete the online study tool (a Collaborate Learning Unit or “CLU,” name courtesy of Dr. Coleman) for each exam (data from 3 exams included in this analysis) and categorized them based on if they took less than an hour, from an hour to a day or more than one day to complete the study tool.
When I watch some of my students complete a 50 question multiple choice exam in 12 minutes, I wonder to myself, “that student can’t possibly be getting an A, can they?”
In calculus I, summation notation is introduced for finding area under a curve using an infinite number of rectangles. From Fall 04 to Spring 15, I utilized a Power Point to introduce the concept. A lecture would be given with interactive moments throughout the lesson. Students would try problems on their own and in teams. The scores on the exam averaged a mid to high D. Approximately 40% of the class would show little to no work on summation problems. Each semester, the lesson would be updated. Yet, exam scores stayed at a D average with no improvement on summations.
I observe many students frantically cramming before quizzes, stressing themselves out and potentially reducing their academic peformance due to test anxiety. Research shows test anxiety could diminish academic performance. To test if anxiety reducing activities lead to better test performance, I randomly led a anxiety reduction activity with two of my sections (stretching exercises, spontaneous laughter) and did not with three of the others, and compared results (see spreadsheet).
After noticing how quickly my online students will take quizzes and surveys, I had to start keeping them from opening too soon so that students wouldn't take the quiz before the learning activities it tested. Then, I thought of a way I could leverage their love for quizzes and came up with the LearnQuiz approach. In my latest online course development (for HUM108), I developed quizzes that had questions that included the learning materials -- then, I made it so that students would get feedback on their correct or incorrect responses to redirect or reinforce their learning.
In Fall 2015, of my Introduction to Psychology classes, I had an honors class required to do a research project. As such, I decided to have my honors class students research, design, run and analyze their own projects (for examples of their projects, feel free to email me!).
At the end of the semester I gave a common final to all of my introductory courses. To explore if actively doing research methods helps learning, I pulled questions from the final having to do with research methods and analyzed performance on those particular questions compared to the test as a whole.
Since rolling-out a new accounting textbook in Fall of 2015, covering three courses, ACC111, ACC230, & ACC240, the decision was made to move chapter 6, Inventory Valuation, from ACC111 to ACC230, effective Spring 2016.
All EDU courses require a Field Experience (where students go into a local K-12 classroom, under the tutelage of a certified teacher). Taking students through the process to ensure their success is always a challenge, since there are a variety of factors beyond our control (Fingerprint Clearance Card acquisition - FPC -, school placement, etc.). EDU teachers have incorporated a variety of documents and strategies to help achieve a higher success rate (see attachments).
When developing the online GER101 online piloted Fall 2015, I created modules in which students were presented with video, audio, & text content on a topic. Various speaking & writing assignments were given, and then a Canvas Quiz was given to assess comprehension. I soon noticed students were going straight to quizzes without accessing Canvas content pages first. After unsuccessful exhortations to go through modules in order, I finally decided, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
Students confuse molecular processes concerning synthesis of macromolecules, particularly DNA, RNA and proteins. I have the students make separate lists of terms they need to know AND clues as to how to keep them separate.The students come to the board and generate the list - they pass a marker to another student to keep adding to the list. We review as a group and determine if all the terms are lined up correctly. This semester I decided to increase the use of contrasting between the processes based on our lists.
Comparison of changing up information on a question that students have struggled with.
About half of the points from my BIO181 class come from high stakes exams. I feel this is necessary to prepare students for their STEM degrees, MCAT, PCAT etc. I split the course content into 5 units with an exam for each unit. This means giving up 5 class meetings to exams, which for a TR class, is over 2 weeks of class time. I tried dividing the content into 4 units, with 4 exams. The last 2 exams remained the same, but I took the content from the first 3 exams and split it between 2 exams instead.