Check for Understanding

As I pilot the the Online version of ASB 214, I want to see how much taking this class improves the students' General Education Abilities of Critical Inquiry and Information Literacy, as these are the two skills I have noticed many students are lacking when they first enroll for the face-to-face version of the class. I will assess the students by assigning them a self-evaluation assignment for both of these skills, both at the beginning and the end of the course, to measure how much they feel they have improved.

While attending the League for Innovation Learning Summit, I was struck by a keynote address by Rachel Fulcher-Dawson of Notre Dame & Corinne Weaver of Catholic Charities in Fort Worth, Texas. They shared the results of a partnership entitled "Stay the Course" in Fort Worth at Tarrant County Community College. The program is a planned intervention for low-income students. In structuring the study four main reasons for student drop-out were:

In EED 280 - Standards, Observation, and Assessment of Typical/Atypical Behaviors of Young Children Birth to Age Eight, in Module 5 of the course, students create and present a 5-8 slide PowerPoint presentation based on their analysis of the Module's readings which include articles and other texts.

Each module for my HIS 102 Online class has a section for student feedback.  I would like to see how much feedback I receive from students and the quality of feedback for each lesson.  Currently, the conclusion section has a few online videos that students can watch so they can learn more about the subject covered and a section where students can ask questions regarding the material (what they understood, what they are confused on, etc.).  I would like to see how many students provide feedback even though it is not required.

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.

Cross cultural psychology (Psy 132), is an introductory course which examines human diversity in behavior and culture using examples from a variety of contexts within western and global societies. This is a popular course among non-psychology majors, based primarily on its “Big 3”General Education designation: Cultural Diversity, Global Awareness, and Social and Behavioral Sciences.

For this CATS I explored how a Kahoot could help students be successful in studying for exams. I gave a traditional review session for Exam 2 (give students terms and tell them to define the terms and give examples for each of the terms in groups), and then for Exam 3 I did a Kahoot review session. Kahoot is an online polling tool where students can compete with one another to answer review questions and get to follow along with their progress as they go through the review session.

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.

Graphing Linear Equations is one of the most difficult concepts for students enrolled in MAT 091. There are many different equations, formulas, and concepts that all build on each other. Every year my students struggle with this exam and no matter how I presented this information or interventions I made, nothing seemed to make it better. In previous years I had suggested to students to make note cards but I didn't give them any guidance on how to create them and I did not follow through to make sure they completed the note cards.

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.

In my RDG courses my students complete weekly Reading Response Journals (RRJ). Students are required to read anything they would like and fill out a template with required information about what they read. They are required to format the information in a specific way. I observed that students consistently struggled with the correctly formatting the document and making sure they included all the correct information, and were losing many points as a result. I had provided detailed instructions on how to format the document/information but students were still struggling.

In 2012 Service Learners in COM100 Honors Cohort prepared and presented Informative Speeches based upon their project and a related Social, Civil, or Global (SCGR) issue. As reported on my CATS submission, only 50% of the students included the issue aspects on the visual aid. In Fall 2015 regular COM100 students (not Honors or Service Learners), were given the opportunity to select a SCGR issue to research and present to class as their "Final Exam" Informative Speech.

We struggle with student tardiness, especially in our early morning classes. We have tried everything from locking the door the minute class starts (which then prevents the student from learning the subject that day) to allowing a maximum number of classes to be tardy in (which we have to keep track of). None of these strategies, or other ones tried, have been successful in reducing tardiness. Plus, the burden is on the teacher to keep track, provide materials missed, etc., thereby increasing our load.

Note: This CATS is being submitted by Rebecca Baranowski, Michelle Breaux, Teri Graham, Sarah Lockhart and Luvia Rivera. In summer 2015, these math faculty attended the Johnson & Johnson Cooperative Learning Institute at SMCC. One of the suggested activities for increasing cooperative learning is to put folders on the tables at the beginning of class. Inside of the folders is a warm up for students to work on together. The institute suggested having only 1-2 sheets of paper in the folder to "force" students to talk to each other about the documents in the folder.

For several years now, I have students write lab reports in calculus I, II and differential equations. The set of directions given to students on what to include in the lab report were ones that I created. Every semester, students would ask follow up questions on what to include in their document. Students constantly missed points for missing information/data or not being detailed enough. This past semester, I decided to see if chemistry faculty had a lab report template, and they do! So, Dr.