In order to get students more personally involved in the learning process, students are given the responsibility of choosing four debate topics that are then used to formulate the questions used in the formal debates in the course.
Through a combination of guided discussion and voting students decide as a group what they will research and debate.
In order to help students explore their prior knowledge and initiate creative and critical thinking about a new topic, students are shown a work of art at the begining of a new unit. The subject matter of the work of art is related to the general topic of the new unit. Students then write on 3 prompts reflecting on the work of art:
1) What do I see?
2) What do I think?
3) I wonder ...
I explain in more detail how these prompts are used to initiate critical thinking in the attached document.
The students apply knowledge obtained in lecture concerning genotype, mutations, and phenotype to an article about a mutant strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa - a frequent cause of pneumonia in cystic fibrosis patients. Traditionally they struggle with two questions in particular. For Sp 09 the average on the hw was 60%.
The Comprehensive Assessment Tracking System ("CATS", found at http://cats.estrellamountain.edu) is a technology-based, fully-integrated system for sharing innovative teaching and assessment practices. This open access system has revolutionized the way that EMCC employees share strategies to improve student learning. In short, CATS is where Facebook® intersects with learning. The system has been recognized as EMCC's "Innovation of the Year" by EMCC's Innovation of the Year committee.
Last week, I took the last 5 minutes of class and asked students to write which concepts were the mot confusing ("muddiest") for them of the current and previous chapter. I categorized the results with the help of Excel (attached) to find out the most troublesome concepts. I discovered that there were five areas that had multiple student mention, including the calculation of inflation (CPI) and unemployment calculation. I restructured my lesson plan for the next today's class to first focus on those 5 specific areas as review.
The CHM 130 class is designed for students to learn through group work and discovery based activities. One of the drawbacks from this method is students ability to grasp concepts at the same pace as their peers. Many times students leave the class unsure of the core concept addressed in the class period. Videotaping lectures lends itself to student apathy during class. The solution I am persuing this semester is videotaping quick 3-5 min snapshots of core concepts and posting them on blackboard for all 9 section of the class. I am using student whiteboards as m
In CIS105, we offer common exams across all sections. This assessment involves 5 chapters from the book. The teaching styles include: class activities, lectures, reading assignments, videos, pre-quiz review in the classroom. The student is asked to take an open-book, multiple-choice, true-false quiz per chapter. At the end of those 5 chapters, there is a combined multiple-choice, true-false Unit Test.
Reading quizzes account for 20% of the final grade in my ENH 254 ( Literature and Film) class. I decided last spring to change up my quizzes for each novel my students read in class.
While success rates are high in my calculus II courses (85-95%, depending on the semester), students struggle with integrating. In spring 2008, students were required to write "recipe cards" on integration techniques for trigonometric substitution and integrals involving trignometry. The average on the quiz was a 75%. Students presented their steps to the class and worked on these recipes as a group days before the quiz. In spring 2010, 2011, and 2012, I did not require students to create these cards; I highly recommended them, though.
EMCC's ECN faculty have developed and implemented the common ECN212 (Microeconomic Principles) final exam by first defining our discipline-wide Learning Objectives (LO) and then created multiple choice questions for the common final portion across all sections. Instructors recorded each students' response for each question in an excel spreadsheet and sent to me, who aggregated and analyzed the results. Overall results were good with 2 more LOs scoring above 80% and 2 fewer scoring below 60%.
Business students have expressed difficulty understanding the accounting rules regarding debits (DRs) and credits (CRs) . Therefore, during Fall 12, ACC111 class, one of the honor students to created, for their honors project, a 3 min video presenting the 7 rules of DRs & Crs. By creating the short video, students would:
a)display their understanding of the 7 rules of DRs & CRs;
b)learn a new skill (e.g. how to create a short and simple video about a comlicated topic);
This is a final assessment of RDG 081, 091 and CRE 101. The common elements included are a short essay (3-5 pages), long essay (5-7 pages), discussion board postings responding to the readings, letter to the reader, and self-assessment. Other artifacts such as power points, prezis, games based on the books, are included with a rationale and rubric for inclusion.
The Humannequin Project includes an assessment each year which varies by topic. The 2013 assessment, rubric, and student scoresheet are attached. Each questions always focuses on Bloom's Taxonomy: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate and Create. Questions 4 and 6 have lower averages. These two areas need to be improved for the 2014 project. UPDATE: For 2014, the topic for the project was gender and language.
In order to compare the performance of those students who had placed directly into ENG101 (placers) with students who had completed ENG091 in order to get into ENG101 (completers), we completed an ENG101 common assignment and assessed an equal number of each group. We used most of the EMCC Writing Rubric (Focus, Support, Organization, Language Use, and Mechanics--scale of 1 - 4.) All nine residential ENG faculty took part in the assessment on January 7, 2013 -- we particiapted in norming and then scored papers.
EMCC's ECN faculty have developed and implemented the common ECN211 (Macroeconomic Principles) final exam by first defining our discipline-wide Learning Objectives (LO) and then created multiple choice questions for the common final portion across all sections. Instructors recorded each students' response for each question in an excel spreadsheet and sent to me, who aggregated and analyzed the results (See attached). Overall results showed slight improvements in 4 LOs but 2 were worse than the previous semester.