Face to Face

Students struggle with using direction fields to solve a given problem.  In the 1st two semesters, lecture was primarily used with handouts and group work being utlized more in the last 3 semesters.  Students have continually received a C grade on the direction field exam question and a C/B average on homework questions.  In Fall 2014, the handout was modified, and students worked in groups with no guidance from the instructor.  Technology as incorporated as well (MATLAB) to graph the direction fields.

Minicases provided to students contain info about the bacterium from the patient and the patient signs/symptoms. The objective for the students is to correctly ID which organism causes the infection and explain why to support their answer. Minicases provide info concerning both of the areas(bacteria & patient) in 2-4 sentences. I wanted to see if students could id these two areas cold turkey - no lecture from me, just reading the minicase. The majority of students just identified bacteria info as important - 70%. Only 25% identified both disease info and bacterial info.

The humannequin project connects academic research with political art on specific gender issues. Students must research their gender issues and provide information from credible, academic sources.  SOC 212 students participated in the Information Literacy Assessment in 2011 and then again in 2014. The four areas in the assessment were (1) framing the research question, (2) accessing sources, (3) evaluation of information, and (4) create original work. The rubric created by the SAAC committee is attached as well as the spreadsheet with results (created by Terry Meyer and James Waugh).

As a semester research project for BIO 160, I have students research a disease and write a paper and present with a group their research. In past semesters I have simply posted the grading rubric on the LMS. This semester I decided to present the rubric and have students practice using the rubric in efforst to increase student awareness of thier contribution to their grade. I find that students are not fully aware of thier contribution to thier grade. I am hoping that taking the time to teach students how the project will be evaluated will result in higher quality projects.

In fall 2013, Dwain Desbien and I taught MAT221/PHY121 learning community (LC).  In spring 2014, 8 of these students went on to take MAT230 with me (calculus II).  Here is some info on the LC students as compared to the non LC students.  

A question on my BIO156/181 Unit 5 exam addresses Mendelian genetics and the inheritance of a trait from parents. The trait in question is inherited in a simple Mendelian manner (one gene with two alleles, one allele being dominant and the other allele being recessive.)   Originally the question was about hitchhiker's thumb and involved a kind of "double negative" statement, where "lack of the thumb" was dominant.  I think this wording was making it hard for students to think through the problem.

Nursing students (those enrolled in BIO156) and STEM majors (those enrolled in BIO181) are often underprepared when it comes to math skills.  In BIO156/181 one of the places where this becomes evident is with conversion of measurements between units (e.g. milimeters to micrometers etc...).  We cover the metric system in one lab, take one quiz the following week and then move on.  Many students score badly on the quiz, and never really learn from it or improve.

Every semester, logs seem to be the most difficult topic for our students. I have tried to tie in the ideas to real world, show students why and how we use logs, but still no success in them fully understanding the material. The students do numerous homework problems, workbook pages and examples in class. This semester I decided to try something different. The students had a workbook page they did for homework, I checked it after they had time to work. Two class periods later I gave them a worksheet to do in class in their groups. They were to try doing as much of it without using notes.

During the past few years of teaching trig, I have always had students struggle significantly with the trig identity chapter. Every semester I try to tweak the way I teach the material and the practice the students receive but I still have students that just don't grasp the material. Fall 2013 I decided to try extending my lecture days by one class and moving the exam. In doing this I was hoping that more time would lead to better success. It still did not make a significant difference.  Thus, this semester I decided to make even bigger changes.

                There are many ways to assess student learning. Traditionally,  I create my own tests however, for one assessment in an English 101, I decided to try something different.  As an assignment on Essay writing key terms, the students constructed their own test and an answer sheet. Of course, I did not relinquish the reins entirely to the student.

After a student plagiarized a“how to paraphrase” assignment, I was dismayed with student correspondence that I received due its tone and the student’s continued misunderstanding of why it was plagiarism. Because students often avoid paraphrasing, and instead choose to repeatedly use direct quotations, I created a student-instructor role play assignment for ENG 102. See attached assignment for details.

Science faculty are constantly hearing from their students, "This isn't math! I didn't learn this in my math class". Many students are not able to transfer what they learned in math into their science courses.  Most of the concepts in MAT091 are crucial to success in science.  Throughout the semester, I met with 6 science faculty to discuss HOW students see these topics in science classes.

The general public has numerous misconceptions about science. My PHY101 students explored this intersection of science with society by researching a topic, performing a survey, and creating an educational website. The students chose a topic from a list to research. After researching the student came up with a question to test the misconception and three follow up questions to challenge it. The students presented their results in a non-traditional format, an informative website. This educational website was evaluated based on the attached assessment sheet.

Each semester all ECN instructor at EMCC administer the ECN common final exam, a multiple choice test based on our courses learning outcomes, in addition to a course-specific final.  Instructors collect the frequency distribution of student responses, and results are aggregated to look for discipline-wide strenghts and weaknesses.  We then create Learning Outcomes Improvement Plans (LOIPs) to identify ways to changes in pedagogy/curriculum to address weaker areas.

As a way of studying design principles related to composition I have my students complete an exercise that evaluates the compositional strategy employed in a great work of painting from art history.  The students create two diagrams that chart the way the artist uses design principles like scale, line, color, rhythm, unity, emphasis and balance to control the way the eye moves, additionally they map they way the artist uses value (light and dark) to create emphasis and illusions of depth.