Intervention background:
In my TTH hybrid class, students complete assignments every MWF. Some assignments include grammar video tutorials and questions based on the videos.
In-class group work and HW scores told me students had mastered the use of double object pronouns. However, students performed poorly (79.8% average) on the timed chapter exam (50 seconds per question).
In this CATS, I will attempt to assess the effectiveness of the newly created online class, MST157DB. This process will measure the students’ progress by administering a 10 question quiz in the first week of class on various key topics covered over the length of the semester. In the final week, I will once again administer the same quiz. The quizzes will be compared to ascertain if learning has indeed occurred.
I developed ENH114 (African-American Literature) as an online course that uses primarily OERs (Open Education Resources, which are free, online resources that can be used and shared.) I am interested in finding out how this approach works for students -- on the plus side, it will save them money and insure that they have access to course materials when they need them. However, I want to see how the use of OERs seems to be going -- how effective this approach is, and whether there are any issues.
This semester I have developed a common lab final for the BIO 160 sections offered here at EMCC. This common final will incorporate laboratory activities performed during the semester and is a cumulative final. The common lab final should serve to support similar curriculum across across all sections offered here at EMCC.
Results from this final will help me identify lab activies that need refinement as well as commonly misunderstood concepts from the class.
This clicker case study will be designed to use existing knowledge gained from class helping make connections between what they might consider separate concepts (chemistry, mitosis, genetics and cancer). This case study will allow student to plan and diagnose, treatment plan, analyze the results of the treatment plan and evaluate if this treatment plan would be ideal for this particular patient.
What I will assess: I will be assessing the comprehension of material to answer multiple choice questions assessing their knowledge of
Students struggle with using direction fields to solve a given problem. In the 1st two semesters, lecture was primarily used with handouts and group work being utlized more in the last 3 semesters. Students have continually received a C grade on the direction field exam question and a C/B average on homework questions. In Fall 2014, the handout was modified, and students worked in groups with no guidance from the instructor. Technology as incorporated as well (MATLAB) to graph the direction fields.
In fall 2013, Dwain Desbien and I taught MAT221/PHY121 learning community (LC). In spring 2014, 8 of these students went on to take MAT230 with me (calculus II). Here is some info on the LC students as compared to the non LC students.
A question on my BIO156/181 Unit 5 exam addresses Mendelian genetics and the inheritance of a trait from parents. The trait in question is inherited in a simple Mendelian manner (one gene with two alleles, one allele being dominant and the other allele being recessive.) Originally the question was about hitchhiker's thumb and involved a kind of "double negative" statement, where "lack of the thumb" was dominant. I think this wording was making it hard for students to think through the problem.
Nursing students (those enrolled in BIO156) and STEM majors (those enrolled in BIO181) are often underprepared when it comes to math skills. In BIO156/181 one of the places where this becomes evident is with conversion of measurements between units (e.g. milimeters to micrometers etc...). We cover the metric system in one lab, take one quiz the following week and then move on. Many students score badly on the quiz, and never really learn from it or improve.
During the past few years of teaching trig, I have always had students struggle significantly with the trig identity chapter. Every semester I try to tweak the way I teach the material and the practice the students receive but I still have students that just don't grasp the material. Fall 2013 I decided to try extending my lecture days by one class and moving the exam. In doing this I was hoping that more time would lead to better success. It still did not make a significant difference. Thus, this semester I decided to make even bigger changes.
There are many ways to assess student learning. Traditionally, I create my own tests however, for one assessment in an English 101, I decided to try something different. As an assignment on Essay writing key terms, the students constructed their own test and an answer sheet. Of course, I did not relinquish the reins entirely to the student.
Science faculty are constantly hearing from their students, "This isn't math! I didn't learn this in my math class". Many students are not able to transfer what they learned in math into their science courses. Most of the concepts in MAT091 are crucial to success in science. Throughout the semester, I met with 6 science faculty to discuss HOW students see these topics in science classes.
Each semester all ECN instructor at EMCC administer the ECN common final exam, a multiple choice test based on our courses learning outcomes, in addition to a course-specific final. Instructors collect the frequency distribution of student responses, and results are aggregated to look for discipline-wide strenghts and weaknesses. We then create Learning Outcomes Improvement Plans (LOIPs) to identify ways to changes in pedagogy/curriculum to address weaker areas.
I had being noticing for years that a majority of students in every semester does not score in there exams as expected and hence I planned to keep aside the last 3 days at the end of the last semester as follows.
Dec/02/2013 - Exam Review, Dec/04/2013 - MOCK EXAM*, Dec/06/2013 - Review again with regard to the Mock Exam Results and compared it with The Final Exam on Dec/11/2013 and Dec/09/2013 respectively.
the following were the results.
Since August 2009, I have had students come and see me (as division chair) to ask about retaking the placement exam to get into a higher course. During these last 5 years, I have always had the students go to the math videos created by math faculty on the EMCC placement website. I also told these students to go to www.khanacademy.org and use this free online resource to assist them. In every case, students placed higher on the placement exam (unfortunately, I did not keep a tally for the number of students this impacted).