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Students struggle with mastering concepts in microbiology. Journaling is a method that is documented to help students learn science courses. We implemented journaling recently and wanted to see if there is any significant impact after 3 semesters of collecting data.

Spoiler alert - nope, at least with the way we are implementing journaling currently. We are regrouping and will restructure the directions to hopefully guide students to be more successful in their journaling. 

See attached. 

The purpose of this CATS is to really dive into one concept and try to figure out what students don't understand about basic integration.  Why is everything u-sub?  After each WU, I will use the information to write another WU to go further into the issues students are having.  The goal is to come up with a set of questions/problems that students have to do which "attack" a concept from multiple directions.  If I can cover the concept in many different ways and variations, I hope to fill any and most gaps students may have in their understanding of basic integration.

We increased the acceptance rate at the Student Conference 2018 while increasing rigor by providing scaffolding and a revise/resubmit process with support structures.  Acceptance rates rose significantly from 28.7% in 2017 to 70% in 2018 with added rigor as expressed by MCCCD faculty who had attended previous conferences.  Additionally, for the first time, 9 out of 10 MCCCD colleges participated in the conferences.

Introductory Biology for Allied Health, Bio 156, is a course many students take for the nursing major.  This course teaches a number of concepts that are important and repeated throughout other biology prerequisite courses (Bio 201 Anatomy and Physiology I, Bio 202 Anatomy and Physiology II, and Bio 205 Microbiology), nursing block 1-4 courses, and the NCLEX, nursing certification exam.  The purpose of this CATS is to question whether the concepts we teach are retained through the courses. We decided to pick one topic and study this process.

College Success Week events aim to connect students with members of the College Community to build connections vital to their success. Roary’s Amazing Race was developed this year as a way to re-envision how information about campus resources is provided to students more effectively for campus resource staff and more engaging for students. As students traveled the pathway to earning their free t-shirt, they were given information by each pit stop on upcoming campus events that may interest them (i.e. upcoming shows at the PAC).

As a math instructor at EMCC for 16 years, I have always believed students must practice.  They have to do 20+ problems outside of class in order to be able to DO problems on exams/quizzes.  From working with physics and chemsitry faculty over the years and seeing what they do with journals, I have been hesitant to try this.  "Math is different.  Math is skill based, and you don't get good at this unless you practice over and over again," I would think to myself.  It took me 16 years to get to this "aha" moment, and I am so excited about this.

In order to encourage my online students to read the comments I leave for them in Canvas, I developed the "Doube-Secret Extra Credit Opportunity" that rewards them for seeing instructions that I leave in a comment in Canvas. (Sadly, none of my students seemed to get the 'double-secret' reference; they mostly called it Super Secret or Secret -- sigh! I guess I'm officaly old if no one remembers Animal House anymore!) The results were amazing; it really got my students talking to me about what they liked and what they were interested in as it relates to the courses

The purpose of this CATS is to document a qualitative review on my experience in the 2nd semester calculus/physics learning community (MAT231/PHY131).   Second semester physics covers charges, electric and magnetic fields, circuits, current (etc), and these concepts have been quite difficult for me to grasp and tie into calculus without Dwain’s help.  The attached narrative provides my previous experiences, current experience, and plan for the future .   

In the Fall of 2016, I decided to convert some of the many writing assignments in my online and hybrid CRE101 course to video submissions rather than written submissions.  Unfortunately, at the time, the recording tool in Canvas was unpredictable and made it very difficult for many students to successfully submit their video submissions.  Submitting by attaching video files was also problematic due to the increased time it took for the students to upload the files and the time for me to download them to grade.  It was so problematic that many students either contacted me abou

Need:  Streamline 1st 4 weeks of Differential Equations.  Create clearer expectations, journal instructions, MATLAB directions, problem sets, and activities.  Alleviate student confusion.  

Writing lab reports is something all students, even strong writers, struggle with.  It is a different style and format to all most other writing that they have experienced before.

For many years now, physics/chemistry faculty require students to journal after each class period (note: there are other faculty on campus who have been journaling for years, as well).  In Fall 2017, a few non-phy/chem faculty incorporated journaling in their classrooms for the first time.  In Spring 2018, during week of accountability, approximately 15 instructors met and discussed best practices in journaling.