Face to Face

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.

Having taught MAT151 (College Algebra) in both Fall 2011 and Spring 2012, I noticed that a fair number of students were having difficulty understanding the concept of a function.  Many failed to recognize how a function's output value varies in a predictable way based on changes to its input value, and most had a hard time connecting the geometric, tabular, verbal and equation representations of a function. Developing this understanding is critical to student success in MAT151 and subsequent math classes.

Since Spring 2010, a common assignment has been incorporated into Sociology 101 (Introduction to Sociology). A group of faculty worked on the assignment and rubric with the SAAC co-chairs during Fall 2009. The assignment has been implemented at the end of each semester in the SOC 101 courses (learning outcomes, assignment, and rubric attached below). I have attached some of the comments and results from the instructors from each of the semesters (when information was provided).

The Social, Civic, Global Responsibility Common Assignment was implemented in SOC 130 (Human Sexuality). Students were given the topic of the AIDS epidemic as their focus for this assignment. The rubric was given at the same time as the assignment. Both were discussed and reviewed in class. The focus of the assignment tied in with the rest of the semester as the students organized the EMCC AIDS team, raised money for AIDS awareness, and created slides to be shown outside during the AIDS Day event. The average scores were as follows:



Question 1:  2.67(of 3)

Our goal was to raise the grade of muscle lab practicals. A muscle practical requires recognizing/naming 60 muscles, and stating  the action of those muscles. I hypothesized it should be easier for students to learn three rules and 8 joint movements, and reason out the muscle actions,  than it would be to memorize 60 names.  Students recieved a list of the name, origin, insertion, action of 60 muscles  a website showing muscle clay images,  flashcards,  and animations.

Student reflection is an integral aspect of effective Service Learning practices and should demonstrate both Academic and Affective learning. In the past I used student-self-directed reflection, with minimal guidance or structure. In order to better assess SCGR proficiency, I (1) provided the students the rubrics for this ability, (2) reviewed them carefully, and (3) required adherence to the criteria in the presentation of Informative Speeches, adding the SCGR criteria to the evaluation instrument as part of the content grade.