In Fall 2012 I had an incredible group of engaged, collaborative, and dedicated students in Abnormal Psychology (PSY 266) Hybrid. So I was shocked and dismayed when I saw that many of my most knowledgable and active students had failed the class when BB calculated their total grades. Digging deeper, I found that 100% of the failing grades resulted from a single source; the failure to do sufficient online work.
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.
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.
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).
During Week 1, students complete a journal entry in which they discuss their thoughts on current gender inequalities and what they think the course will include. The majority of students do not have the details of contemporary gender issues. Most of them state that gender inequalities are part of the past and/or that there are a few gender inequalities due to progress. During Week 16, students complete a journal entry asking them what they will walk away, what surprised them in the course, and how will they promote social change.
In the past I have used a program call MyMathLab (or MathXL) to test students understanding of mathematical concepts. One of the frustrations I always had was that students could use a "help me solve this" or "view an example" help tool to walk them through their assignments, but they never learned. This resulted in very high homework scores, but not as good of scores on the exams. For example, in Spring 2011, my students had a class average of 93.8% on the homework and 88% on the quizzes. However, their midterm average was only 80.7% and the final exam average was o
The Social, Civic, and Global Responsibility assignment was given to my EDU222 hybrid course, with disappointing results. The average score was a 10.6 out of 15 (71%). Knowing that I would be giving the same assignment to my EDU230 hybrid course, I consulted with others who had better results. This led to the creation of the following guides that students were mandated to use and attach to their final paper:
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.
Does the student understand the FITT Principle?
Information Literacy: Use current FITT Principle Pre & Post Test. Consider updating the test.
Can the student apply the FITT Principle to improving / maintaining their fitness level.
Re-design the DYO WOW assignments ???
Has the student made changes to their exercise program to ensure improvement / maintenance in their fitness level.
In Spring 2012 I participated in a district workshop on information literacy titled "Research Assignment Handouts: Essential Elements to Promote Student Success." I revised the handout for the group research & symposium assignment to better help students get started by suggesting resources, requiring help from a librarian, specifying which data bases to use, and providing more details about what consititutes plagiarism. I also revised the rubric to better reflect these items. I will qualitatively assess the quality of the student research and avoidance
Using SAAC’s EMCC General Education Abilities Matrix the residential librarians assessed 4 key Information Literacy competencies; Framing the Research Question, Accessing Sources, Evaluation of Information Resources and Create Original Work.
The librarians created a rubric which defined each of the 4 Information Literacy competencies and rated each on a clearly defined 3 level scale. Data was collected from 13 courses for a total of 24 sections. 346 students took part in the study.
A general survey on gender issues was given at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester. There were two questions for each gender issue: (1) how important is the issue and (2) how much work needs to be done on the issue. The issues focused on the feminist movement, reproductive rights, economic justice, gender and violence, men and masculinity, lgbtq rights, gender and language, gender and the media, gender and politics, social activism and social change. A 5 point Likert scale (not important to very important) was used.
Barkley (2010) suggests that having members of a group read and individually sign a contract regarding their participation and behavior in the group will improve interpersonal accountability. EDU222 students are required to collaborate and submit a group case study. At the conclusion of the project, they rate each of their group members on a variety of contributing characteristics (see "Member Rating" attachment).