Incorporating Technology or new technologies

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.

When I watch some of my students complete a 50 question multiple choice exam in 12 minutes, I wonder to myself, “that student can’t possibly be getting an A, can they?”

In Fall 2015, of my Introduction to Psychology classes, I had an honors class required to do a research project. As such, I decided to have my honors class students research, design, run and analyze their own projects (for examples of their projects, feel free to email me!).

At the end of the semester I gave a common final to all of my introductory courses. To explore if actively doing research methods helps learning, I pulled questions from the final having to do with research methods and analyzed performance on those particular questions compared to the test as a whole.

One of the biggest factors to student success is whether students are able to manage their time efficiently.  Canvas offers a fantastic way to sync personal calendars in i-cal and Google with Canvas assignments. To asses and encourage students use of this function, I compared a PSY 101 F:F course in which students were not provided instruction or calendar sync assignmet, to a SWU 102 course in which students were assigned a calendar sync assignment with instructions.

The first step to building professional relationships of respect with students is to know and use their name. I have problems remembering the names of some of my students that are in my hybrid classes, since we only meet once per week. The Great Southwest Teaching Conference in October is an annual conferenced for sharing out of good teaching ideas. A colleague I met there confessed to the same dilemma, and shared their solution - a picture of each student at the beginning of the semester!

In Fall 2013, I piloted a video reflection assignment in the Sociology courses.

Nursing is challenged by requiring an extremely intense curriculum to be delivered to students in a very short amount of time. A solution the nursing department adopted in Fall 2012 to alleviate this problem is "Flipping" the classroom! "Flipping" is a new innovative teaching style that parallels with EMCC Learning College Guiding Principles. The students are given lectures and power point slides in the form of a video to be viewed before class and in-class time is devoted to exercises, case studies and discussions.