Active Learning

I had nine students who were disengaged in group discussions. They had not actively participated in our class discussions by: being active, speaking up, volunteering for activities, or asking or answering questions.
To help, I used nine small candy bars, and taped them to the bottom of these student's desk. Students discussed nine key points in small groups. This way every student was actively involved in the learning of the material. After, students had to reach under their desk, and if they had a chocolate bar they were the chosen ones to share.
I discovered:

The Feminist Club engaged students in a workshop for Women's History Month. The workshop focused on understanding intersectionality and its importance to feminism. Students engaged in active learning with the student leader who presented. A pre survey and post survey was given to the students to measure their learning. Please see attachment.

During the Spring 2017 semester, our Counseling Division held a retreat with all our residential and adjunct faculty.  At our retreat, we provided a catered lunch and shared best practices from our CPD 150 courses.  We discussed our OER Canvas curriculum for our CPD 150 classes.  We have five modules in Canvas for our CPD 150 courses:  College Resources, Time and Planning, Personal Development, Study Skills, and College and Careers.  We divided our division faculty into five groups, and assigned each group a module from Canvas.  Each group evaluated their modul

Since Fall 2014 , the calculus instructors have been working on creating common questions to have on the final exam for calculus I.  Faculty (both full and part time) meet to discuss pedagogy, common questions and creation of a pre-post test.  The common questions are the first half of our final exam with the 2nd half written by each individual faculty member.  Each semester, the questions are looked over and kept or modified.  The purpose of the common questions is to make sure all calculus faculty are covering "core" topics in MAT22X.

The Feminist Club's focus for Women's History Month has been Intersectionality and Feminism. Club members tabled outside with posters on intersectionality in order to educate employees and students on its importance.  95% of those who attended the table did not know about intersectionality. After club members discussed the topic with attendees and shared their informational posters, attendees were encouraged to create a poster on intersectionality. The posters were placed on a clothesline for sharing.

In our first run of the PHY131/MAT231 learning community (LC) in Fall 16, we tried a format of seting up a physics problem on an exam, and then use the resulting integral to be solved on the math portion of the exam. We would like to do this for each of the 5 exams in Fall 17. This would allow/require us to focus on intgrals from day one and reorder material in both classes. Some reordering was done in Fall 16, but after our first time around, we realize that more needs to be changed.

Need: While EDU students all do Field Experiences anywhere from 10 – 30 hours, sometimes their experiences don’t directly correlate to the competencies of the course they are taking.

Occasionally interpreter assistance is needed at the Library Desk but help isn’t always available. Identifying this opportunity, I designed a solution using Google Translate. I created a set of instructions with step-by-step directions for colleagues. Equipment purchased to support this solution were wireless mice & keyboards. This was necessary in order to facilitate sharing in the typing and browsing process. The outcome of the adoption of this approach to service has been successful.

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Need: Students who make use of class/campus resources perform better academically. However, many rarely use their syllabi. As a result, students frequently ask instructors for things like due dates, class policies, or the # of assignments/points in a class. I've attached two docs: Syllabus Questions & a syllabus.

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Need: Increasing the likelihood that students who watch/listen to classmates give speeches will use those watching/listening experiences to become better public speakers themselves.

Last semester, I wanted listeners to enhance their public-speaking skills by having them learn from their peers' speeches. To be clear, this is not about learning from the content of their peers' speeches, rather learning about the nature of good public speaking.  This is different than something else I do, which is have 3 listeners provide feedback that is given to the speaker.

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Need: Students are required to use at least 5 credible sources, but have struggled to identify and use them.

Enhancement (see esp. #2): 

(1) Instruction: Credible sources meet all 3 criteria: (a) written by a named [with rare exceptions] authority on the subject under discussion; (b) timely [which usually, but not always, means recent]; (c) has minimal bias [completely objective sources don't exist].

(2) Template: Students type into/complete the attached Word document, "Research Packet." (10 points of speech)

Within ENG101, last fall in the 2016 semester (traditional 16 week Face-to-Face class met on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.), the instructor incorporated the Weekly Wellness SMART Goal Tracking System into her curriculum.  After Lyle’s delivery of the initial orientation to ENG101 students, the instructor invited her entire class to participate in the Weekly Wellness.  Nevertheless, interestingly enough, as time progressed, the class naturally broke into the two groups: participants vs.

The Communication Abilities Rubric assesses areas of physical and vocal delivery.  Instructors and students have not fully understood the categories in the rubric. As an innovative approach, my Com230H section did a media project breaking down each element of the rubric into video. I allowed for flexibility with strict guidelines to ensure all disciplines and communication research was covered. Next, 18 students assessed themselves 3x for 3 group presentations.

The Outreach Team facilitated a Service Learning project which included students participating in EMCC's ACE Program. The project utilized materials from I Am Human: Campaign to End Derogatory Language. 100 students watched the I Am Human Video, completed assessments, exhibited critical thinking through group dicussions, and coalesed the event by using kind words to create tokens of gratitude. Please see attachments for assemsent results and detailed report of the Service Learning event.

In my F 2016 BIO181 classes, I noticed several students checking email, texting, sleeping. Those students  usually sat alone in the back of the room. I use “think-pair-share” activities to promote collaborative learning and communication, but this is challenging when disengaged students are spread out all over the classroom. To boost engagement, I established a seating policy mid-semester.  All front seats must be filled first, and no one sits alone at a table. I asked students to get up and move, and late comers could not avoid being directed to open seats.