Written Communication

The Career Skills Challenge, hosted by the Career and Transfer Center during the 25-26 academic year, is a low-budget, high-impact workshop series designed to teach NACE competencies through gamification. The program engaged 56 students in scenarios ranging from survival councils to office simulations. The assessment shows a 100% peer-recommendation rate and high skill-connection scores, proving that innovative storytelling and campus partnerships can be equally vital to student engagement than high-cost programming.

Choice matters! I responded to student feedback that they wished we had more time for certain niche topics in a large survey course. I replaced two of my personal niche topics with the chance for them to explore topics that interested them. This improved submission rates, the overall quality of the assignments, and student satisfaction without compromising the overall learning objectives. 

Introductory biology courses serve as a foundation for upper-division coursework and are expected to develop not only content knowledge but also essential skills such as note-taking, organization, and conceptual understanding. A persistent challenge in BIO156 is that students struggle to identify key information, organize their notes, and connect concepts, often relying on memorization of isolated facts. This limitation affects their ability to apply knowledge and create effective study tools, such as exam cheat sheets.

This assessment evaluates the effectiveness of the 2026 Earth Forward Event, hosted at Estrella Mountain Community College, in supporting student learning related to environmental literacy, sustainability, and engagement with career pathways in life sciences and conservation.

This submission details the implementation and results of a Midterm Student Feedback (MSF) assessment conducted in Dr. Pargas' ESOL Level 2 class. The primary purpose of the assessment was to gain real-time insight into the factors that help and hinder student learning, enabling continuous pedagogical improvement within the current class term. The MSF was administered anonymously at the midpoint of the course using a three-question worksheet that focused on learning aids, barriers, and suggestions for improvement.

This CATS presents an update on the implementation of Lab Write-Ups to foster and assess science literacy among lower-division chemistry students at EMCC. The Spring 2025 iteration aimed to provide structured, low-risk opportunities for students in CHM 130AA and 151AA to engage in discipline-specific writing, bridging foundational skills with expectations of upper-division coursework and professional life. Revisions included enhanced rubric criteria, clearer sentence starters aligned to learning outcomes, and refined peer review prompts.

This assessment focuses on supporting students retaking ALT 100: Academic Literacy Through Integrated Reading and Writing, a foundational course that prepares students for English 101. These students, having previously failed or withdrawn, faced a range of academic and personal barriers, including time management challenges, low confidence, limited access to technology, and gaps in literacy skills.

• Continue to review processes and look for ways to simplify/streamline whenever possible.
• When there are continual pain points, challenges, or overly complicated processes use that to identify a solution. Put your time toward finding/creating/requesting automation to improve the process. It will take additional time in the beginning to determine and implement a solution. Once the solution is implemented it will make up for the extra time it took to identify/make the changes.

The purpose of this assessment is to explore the potential benefits of reintroducing Lab Write-Ups in science courses at EMCC as a means to enhance students’ science literacy. Lab Write-Ups provide an opportunity for students to share their data collection experiences, interpret results, and engage in scientific reading and writing. They also allow students to incorporate findings into their understanding of the natural world.

This CATs explores the use of a game-based learning activity, modeled after Taboo©, to boost student engagement, communication skills, and conceptual understanding across disciplines. Students worked in pairs to describe and guess course-specific terms without using certain "taboo" words, reinforcing complex concepts while improving verbal and listening abilities. Mixed-methods assessments revealed increased engagement, deeper understanding, and enhanced skills critical for STEM, healthcare, humanities, and social sciences.