Behavioral Sciences

As reported on the 2014 CATS "All-USA Scholarship Selection Process," a "6-Trait Writing Rubric" replaced the EMCC Writing Rubric for scoring the 2015 essays. 2014 scorers reported displeasure with the EMCC Writing Rubric, especially regarding content. The 2015 rubric was customized to weight heavily "Ideas & Content," and the semi-finalist judging score sheet was adjusted accordingly. 2015 scorers reported the new rubric was more effective in judging the value of the experiences and accomplishments in the essays.

In 2012 Service Learners in COM100 Honors Cohort prepared and presented Informative Speeches based upon their project and a related Social, Civil, or Global (SCGR) issue. As reported on my CATS submission, only 50% of the students included the issue aspects on the visual aid. In Fall 2015 regular COM100 students (not Honors or Service Learners), were given the opportunity to select a SCGR issue to research and present to class as their "Final Exam" Informative Speech.

I observe many students frantically cramming before quizzes, stressing themselves out and potentially reducing their academic peformance due to test anxiety. Research shows test anxiety could diminish academic performance.  To test if anxiety reducing activities lead to better test performance, I randomly led a anxiety reduction activity with two of my sections (stretching exercises, spontaneous laughter) and did not with three of the others, and compared results (see spreadsheet).

In Fall 2015, of my Introduction to Psychology classes, I had an honors class required to do a research project. As such, I decided to have my honors class students research, design, run and analyze their own projects (for examples of their projects, feel free to email me!).

At the end of the semester I gave a common final to all of my introductory courses. To explore if actively doing research methods helps learning, I pulled questions from the final having to do with research methods and analyzed performance on those particular questions compared to the test as a whole.

Two 101 classes were given general information about the voices missing in the textbook version of the history of PSY (see addendum A). Only one of the classes was then assigned to complete a research project identifying and describing one of the voices missing. Students will share slides and be required to respond to classmates' slides for maximum exposure (addendum B). At the end of the semester, both classes will be assessed for the effects of the intervention (addendum C).

A key component of Anthropology classes is group discussion.  Students need to learn to respect other cultures but also their own, it is harder to connect & haver respect for people when they are faceless.  Having this discourse is hard in online classes where students get very little interaction other than in writing.

One of the biggest factors to student success is whether students are able to manage their time efficiently.  Canvas offers a fantastic way to sync personal calendars in i-cal and Google with Canvas assignments. To asses and encourage students use of this function, I compared a PSY 101 F:F course in which students were not provided instruction or calendar sync assignmet, to a SWU 102 course in which students were assigned a calendar sync assignment with instructions.

Observation is the heart and soul of cultural anthropolgy. For ASB 214, an Intro to Comparative Religion, I assigned the class to view a video explaining the basics of ethnrographic research. For the next class, I paired them up and assigned each pair to observe a specific "culture area" on campus, i.e. the studuent union, the bookstore, etc. They had to develop a research question (Which do students use more often for purchases? Cash or debit?), observe their area for 20 mins and take observation notes, then analyze their findings. Were they able to answer their research question?

Over the years I have struggled with getting students to choose speech topics that are an appropriate 

Teaching Psychology Statistics is daunting.  It is effectively an applied mathematics course focused a single topic, psychology.  The school's data has shown that when students come to EMCC underprepared, it is likely to be in mathematics.  Thus, student success in math often requires intense support- emotional and intellectual- by both peers and instructors: guided practice, and lots of immediate feedback on the process of turning a large set of numbers into a meaningful narrative.

This semester I am assigning students online homework problems using Sapling Learning. After the due date expires, I plan to analyze which questions were most frequently missed.  Then I will bring these back as part of a study session prior to the midterm 1.  Similar questions will be restested as part of their midterm, and an analysis conducted to see if students' scores improved as a result of the feedback and additional practice in these areas.

The "I Am Human" Campaign focuses on choosing language that creates an inclusive culture demonstrating social awareness. Students watched the "I Am Human" video in addition to reading about the campaign on the EMCC website. Students participated in a pre/post survey and discussion board directly connected to the campaign. Their weekly video reflection and final journal entry are typical assignments in the Sociology courses. The students mentioned the campaign in both assignments as examples of what impacted them in the course. Please see the attached document on the results.

Every anthropology class starts with an explanation of anthropology and the fact that there are four main sub-fields in anthropology (i.e. Archaeology, Cultural, Linguistics, Physical.)  Each anthropologist specializes in one of these fields.  At the beginning of the semester each field is discussed, explained, and students are encouraged to think of examples of each.  After understanding the fields, they are asked which of the fields they think they would like best.

In Fall 2014 I re-designed my COM225 Public Speaking course into a 5-week "Fast Track to Completion" format.  When I recalled having taught Summer sessions (which are also 5 weeks in duration), I remembered that students had difficulty completing the reading assignments from the established textbook--it was quite lengthy (and expensive).  But, I wanted to see if taking the course during the regular semester might make a difference in student engagement with the textbook.  Dismal results. Only about 75% of the students were reading and comple

During Fall 2014, SOC 130 (Human Sexuality) particiapted in the SAAC Critical Inquiry Assessment. I have attached the assignment, the SAAC rubric, and the scores for the course. Students created a research project focusing on five areas (averages in parentheses): 1. question/observation (3.91)  2. hypothesis (3.46) 3. planning (3.18) 4. analysis (3.95)  5. conclusion (3.82). The lowest score was in the planning area which is the development of the survey questions which had to connect to testing their hypothesis.