Graphic Organizer/Visual Representation

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.

A straight lecture on cell structures is torture for students. To remedy this, I designed a system of flashcards where each organelle is represented by 3 types of cards: a picture card, a structure card, and a characteristic card. Cards have alignment hints for the other two cards. Each group of 4 students is given one set of 36 cards. They work together to align the 3 cards for each organelle.  While groups are engaged in collaborative work to tease out details about each organelle, I can work more closely with each student as they learn to critically evaluate card content.

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 the last couple of years I have noticed that students tend to forget what they have learned even after scoring well in the exams.
Once students learn a new module/chapter, most of them seem to completely forget about the previous chapters which is not a very good sign especially for a mathematics student.

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.

Every semester my students start class (both face to face and online) with the Getting Started Module.  One of the assignments is the "Meet Your Class" assignment.  This assignment is standard in Canvas and requires that students embed a picture into their discussion post.  Embedding a picture in Canvas is not the simple cut and paste or upload that the students are used to.  When I first started using this assignment (Spring  2013) the average score on this assignment was 16.44/20 due to an unsuccefully embedded photo.

My ESL students have been challenged to produce clear and coherent writing on a particular topic, even when the topic is on their own preferred choice. I came up with the idea of using a visual, a graphic organizer, and work step by step toward producing good writing. Dissecting and discussing the paragraph structure, looking closer into each of its parts helped my students understand the purpose of writing – how each part (beginning, body, and ending) contributes to producing cohesive and clear writing.

In my 16 week RDG 091 course, prior to the first group presentation, I spend one or two classes teaching students the oral and format expectations of an oral PowerPoint presentation.  In Fall, 2013, I taught an 8 week version of the RDG 091 course and found that there was limited time to extensively teach these skills prior to their first oral presentation.  I provided them the rubric ahead of time and covered the information as best I could with the time I had.  However, I was very disappointed in the results.