Cooperative/Collaborative Learning

At the end of the semester, students in BIO160 take a cumulative lab practical.  A practical exam is set up in stations, the students physically move from station to station and has a “set up” from a lab.  There are 2-3 questions for each station; the exam is timed.  The first semester giving the practical, the scores were very low.  In an attempt to improve the scores, I gave the students a review and the grades improved slightly.  This has been the routine for a few semesters.  At the end Fall16, I tried a practice practical.  After an informal survey, I

A prerequisite to physics is MAT182.  Students need to know law of sine/cosine, and vector concepts from trig to be successful in physics.  In the past, I would spend a lot of time classify triangles (SSS, ASA, etc) to help students know which "law" to use, and this was done at the end of the semester.  I did not spend time using law of sine/cosine with vector applications .  Students typically scored a low B on law of sine/cosine problems.   In F17, I taught the "laws" and incorporated vectors in week 4 to show students real life applications.

Participants registered and attended the face-to-face workshop that was presented using Canvas. Individuals registered for the course using a provided link. Participants completed a pre-assessment to measure their understanding of utilizing Canvas outside of the classroom according to the learning objectives. After the pre-assessment the workshop included topics on the purposes of using a LMS (according to eLearning Industry), connecting benefits of a LMS to out-of-class activities, and discussing how EMCC can move forward with these ideas in mind.

Every semester, students perfrom poorly on the final exam for calculus I (MAT22X); the average is typically a D/F.  Students are given an indepth review guide of all topics in the course along with the answer key that includes detailed steps on how to do each problem.  I often make changes to my pedagogy, handouts, activities, exams, homework, and other assessments every semester. In Spring 17, two main things changed in my MAT221 course.  

We specifically investigated how we can integrate creativity more effectively in the classroom for the benefit of both students and faculty. Our investigation included: reading Creative Confidence, learning more about Design Thinking challenges, locating and sharing creativity resources, using creativity to personally address one teaching challenge, and implementing at least one actitivty/lesson/strategy that we deveop using creativity to at least one class this semester.

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:

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

For both students and instructors, major writing research projects are problematic:  they're especially difficult for students who lack strong writing skills, and they difficult for instructors in the time it takes to grade the projects.  After several semesters grading a major APA-style career research 5-7 page paper for CPD 150, I was disappointed in student scores (especially in grammar), and I never looked forward to the amount of time I knew it would take me to grade all of the papers.  It was time to "build a better mousetrap"!

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.

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.

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.

A prior CATS (Accounting Chapter 6 Re-Teach, March of 2016) measured what was learned in inventory valuation from one semester to another, after a teaching intervention (candy example) was included.  Although the grade/scores improved from the formative assessment, the first quiz, the class average for the second quiz was only 11 out of 20 or 55%, which is a failing grade.  Since this second quiz was not for a grade, but rather just a summative evaluation for research purposes, I decided to use the same quiz, but as a graded item for Fall of 2016 and Spring of 2017.

I utilized Literature Circles as a method for creating stronger community in online classes, deepening the engagement between students, and practicing group work in prep for the course final. Students were in 1 group for duration of the semester, each group given additional readings to read, analyze and report out using the Literature Circles roles. The student in the Connector role would collect the student’s work and post it in Canvas for grading and students would switch roles on their own each week.

For only the second time EMCC offered PHY131/MAT231 LC this fall. While N was small (12 and 15) some interesting results were found. On CSEM post test both classes scored above national average of 47% and no real difference in classes. The LC improved dramatically from first exam to last (pre-final) where the other remained flat. It is encouraging that the LC even though the students started at least 1 MAT class behind performed as well and improved up to traditional class scores as semester progressed.