In teaching Muscle function, I have always used an activity where I physically demonstrate the actions to students. Students then stand and work in pairs, mimic the movements on their own body, and evaluate their partner's motions. I circulate and correct with each new motion. When doing the activity as a class, and only their partner is working with them, students think this activity is fun and interesting. The class is excited and loud.
A new supplement for the microbiology text called Mastering Microbiology was recently released by the publisher. I had heard positive things about the Mastering Biology for BIO 181 (pre-req for micro) and decided to implement Mastering Micro in a like manner. For two semesters prior to utilizing Mastering, the average grade overall at the end of the semesters was 74.64% (n=73).Not a bad average but many students indicated they wanted practice and micro is very conceptual. I was not sure exactly what I wanted to see with my students other than overall increase in performance.
In Spring 2013 I taught a 5-week MAT142 class as the second half of a linked MAT121-MAT142. In order to alleviate some of the students’ math anxiety associated with exams and to demonstrate practical applications, I switched from exam-based assessments to project-based assessments with promising results.
I have just finished my first teaching class of MAT082 at EMCC. It was a nice experience for me. But there is one thing I felt like proposing to the structure of the course. I think there should be a midterm at the middle of the semester that covers half the syllabus (at least) and the exam format should be the same as finals. There are couple of positives in this :
1. Students will be introduced with the exam format
2. If the load of chapters are being reduced by half in the final then the students will have better chance to do good in it.
In the Spring 2013 semester, five adjunct faculty mentees, four adjunct faculty mentors, and one residential faculty mentor completed the pilot of the innovative Adjunct Faculty Mentoring Program (AFMP). The AFMP is the research based Applied Integration component of the Adjunct Faculty Professional Development model that also includes Objective and Subjective Skills Development Workshops.
This CATS is to discuss the difference between the final grade results on my traditional calculus I class vs. the one in a learning community with PHY121.
For many years now, math instructors have made the claim that a students' prior knowledge in algebra impacts their success in calculus. If a student struggles with their algebraic skills, can they still pass calculus? To test this hypothesis, I ran data for 188 students which spans from Fall 2005 to Fall 2013 comparing students' 1st exam scores (review exam of algebra) to their final grade in the course.
In Fall 2013, I taught two calculus courses. One of them is linked with Physics (a learning community) and another one is in the traditional format. In the traditional format, calculus is a prerequisite for PHY121. With the learning community, students are able to take both MAT220 and PHY121 in the same semester. The learning community students have the advantage of seeing the applications of calculus in the same semester while the traditional students will see the applications a semester later.
It was noted that one thing many scientists (and others) have in common is a love of puzzles. They require critical thinking skills and many require a scientific inquiry type approach to solve. We decided to see if encouraging our students to attempt a number of puzzles throughout the semester, for extra credit, would enhance their critical thinking skills or at least encourage them to start attempting more puzzles which may be have beneficial in the long run.
Sociology 130, Human Sexuality, focuses on the social, cultural, and institutional contributions to human sexuality. Throughout the semester, students address how society constructs expectations and limitations on sexuality. The last assignment is to create a sexual rights document and to discuss the document with your classmates. The sexual rights document will be assessed through a rubric which focuses on research, sociological imagination, and critical thinking. The SOC 130 online course will be piloted in Spring 2014.
Economics is known for being a difficult subject, but perhaps what students dread most about the class is graphing. There is not a lot of multiple choice questions in my class- students are expected to graph routinely on bi-weekly quizzes. In order to support student development with their graphing abilities, last year I introduced mini-whiteboards as a way to get students practicing graphing as a class warm-up activity, focusing material from the previous class.
Since Fall 2003, a textbook was used in MAT220 (caculus I). For the last 4 years, handouts were created to supplement the textbook. This semester, students use only a workbook that I created. The purpose of this assessment is to document my observations in the level of engagement of students from using textbook only, slowly incorporating worksheets, to full implementation of a workbook. Most math textbooks are not designed to engage students, thus it was difficult to do so.
One learning objective for Com 100 is to have students explain the essential elements of communication using representative communication models. In a F2F setting this can be demonstrated easily by putting the essential elements of a model on the whiteboard and having students stand by the elements such as the “sender” and “receiver” element. They next model the elements in an interactive process. This semester, I assigned students the same assignment, to diagram a recent conversation they had using a model of communication.
In my Intro to Human Com classes, students respond well to the "small-talks" that I assign throughout the course. These talks are 1-2 minute informal speeches that students deliver in front of the class. Explaining their personality test results, reporting on their cultural visits, and relating active listening scenarios are a few examples of the small-talk assignments.
5 -7 minutes
Maria Cecilia Rosales
I use what I call Dictation- Reflection to assess gramatical concepts, listening comprehension and writing skills.
I dictate ten conjugated verb forms from the active vocabulary list for the chapter in question (bailamos, trabajan, etc). Students are asked to:
1- Write down the conjugated verb form I dictate (bailamos)
2- Identify the infinitive form of that verb (bailar)