Face to Face

Two of my hybrid EDU classes this semester were challenging me to actively engage my students, especially when involved in group tasks or assignments. Collaborative groups expert Spencer Kagan recommends, among a variety of strategies, the use of Talking Tokens. Each student is given 3 tokens (I use paper clips from a box in the middle of each table). As they talk, ask a question, give a suggestion, etc., they put a token back in the box. When they are out of tokens, they cannot talk until everyone else in their group is also out. Then, the process begins again.

EMCC has recently instituted a "no late enrollment" policy, due to the understanding that "learning starts on Day One" and the idea that students who enroll after the first day of class generally are not as prepared, and therefore not as successful as their peers who were in the class from the beginning.  However, does this phenomenon reach back even further in time?  Do students who enroll early in a class do better than those that enroll at the last minute (even though they did enroll before the first day)?

experiencing ATP production

In this study, a modified CREATE methodology (www.teachcreate.org) was used to incorporate the reading, analysis and discussion of four primary research papers from the recent biological literature into BIO182.  Individual and group activities were used to integrate the papers into the course; some activities were graded, some were not.  Activities included concept mapping, cartooning of experimental design, paragraph summarizing, data transformation, and figure annotation.

 In 2015/16 EMCC hired a staff member and faculty member to create and manage the Service Learning program. Beginning in 2015/16 there were new initiatives to promote SL on campus: workshops, multiple presentations (i.e.Day-of-Learning), in-class presentations and one-on-one faculty meetings in order to increase faculty and student participation.

Intersectionality is a signficant topic in feminist theory; however, it tends to be forgotten in gender discussions. Kimberlee Crenshaw's definition is used in the course (please see attachment). When teaching SOC 212 (Gender and Society), the focus is obviously on gender. However, the concept of intersectionality needs to be further included in the discussion. Students have had difficulty understanding the concept even after watching a film clip. In order to increase understanding and application of intersectionality, I created new activities along with the film: 1.

Students will be able to analyze recent research relating brain-based learning and healthy lifestyle choices in order to optimize student learning and academic performance.  WITC is a system of linking engagement in healthy habits to assignments in academic classes to encourage engagement in healthy habits.  Students are assigned articles to read followed by class discussion on setting SMART goals in one of five areas; exercise, nutrition, sleep, resiliency, or substance abuse.  Students then set goals and track completion over a period of weeks.  K

As stated in a previous CATS (Conceputual Understanding in PHY121), the focus of this assessments is on the conceptual understanding of the Learning Community compared with the traditional Phy 121 course.   Current data continue to show that the overall learning of the learning community student is equivalent those of the traditional student.

Learning Community (LC) faculty have been saying for 6 years that the main focus on the LC is to help students in future STEM courses.  Majoring in a STEM field is difficult; math is a barrier for most students.  Approximately 20% of community college students start as a STEM major with 69% of them changing it to non-STEM.  The LC course is designed to help students be successful STEM students and truly understand how math and physics are intertwined.  So, student grades were analyzed from fall 2010 - spring 2016.  Students that went through the LC vs.

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.

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.

In my Introduction to Physics class in spring 2016, I integrated a series of mini-lectures, hands-on activities, and conceptual questions for topics relating to internal energy into a single worksheet of questions that students complete as groups. I occasionally interrupted to have students discuss certain questions and so I could help motivate the answers to a few others. It seemed that students in past semesters were getting bored with perhaps the timing of or maybe the linear way we went through the series.

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.

After discussing the positive effects of exercise on student learning with EMCC's fitness and wellness director, Lyle Bartlett, I employed a rigorous walking schedule for a minimum of 15 minutes at the beginning of class in one of my statistics courses while another section served as the control group where no class exercise took place. Less than 15% of students in both groups self-reported exercising more than two times per week making groups comparable. I used an independent samples t-test to compare mean quiz scores from the treatment (e.g., those who walked) and control groups.