Self

The purpose of this qualitative study was to evaluate an environment to determine whether or not it encourages interaction among tutors and faculty. Prior to the intervention in Spring 2020, tutor and faculty interaction was low during pre-semester meet-and-greet sessions; the sessions were conducted in a panel format with tutors comprising the audience. The Spring 2020 session, however, was held in a small-group format, and informal feedback was positive. Formal tutor survey results showed that the small groups enabled more flow of conversation as well as deeper connection.

I wanted to see what motivated students to respond to general questions in the 7am Introductory to Psychology class.  Was it consumables or extra credits?

Group presentations have always been a part of my classroom, but after watching numerous presentations where students aren’t prepared to present or engaged while viewing the presentation, I realized I needed to make a change.  My hope is that by having students present in smaller groups and present the entire slideshow, students will have a better understanding of the material they are presenting and their classmates will pay closer attention to the presentation.

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Through conversations with the tutors, a desire was discovered to be better.  The tutors know their material very well but wanted to see if there was a way to improve on their delivery style and customer service.  I introduced the concept of continuous quality improvement (CQI) which is a culture of never-ending improvement.  The assumption is that unless we learn something about what we are doing, we are unlikely to know how to improve it.

Assessment Practitioner was offered through the CTL this Spring 2020 semester for interested faculty and staff that wanted to continue their professional growth.  This hybrid Canvas course is designed to equip our faculty and staff with the information to understand the goals and practices of assessment in our Learning College culture.  This course has given the opportunity to model the true essense of a Learning College, by faciliating the natural relationship between teaching, learning, and assessment through weekly face-to-face sessions, weekly assignments, and colleague discus

I teach MGT101 online and most of the assignments are discussions and essays.I would like to explore more ways of online engagement using the Groups feature in Canvas. Discussions work fine, but I notice it can be challenging to encourage students to respond in a non-forced, non-mechanical way. Last semester, I used a group assignment from the course master. The assignment required students to read a case study, and as a team, respond to the written assignment as a discussion within their group. Groups gave students control of the assignment in their learning workspace.

Knowledge retention and transfer are at the core of what we do. It is evident that all students learn in different ways. However, if students are asked to DO something in the process of learning they will not only retain the information but rather be able to comprehend how it is applied to the real world. In addition, as the students start to report out to the class the instructor can listen to the responses and clarify or demonstrate the material to ensure long term retention success. For more information not included in this write up, please attachments.

Update: In Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, I continued to use the scaffolding handout that addressed conceptual understanding of limits at infinity (as described in this CATS). This handout addresses EMCC's ILO of critical thinking along with the CLO of choosing the most appropriate tool/technique to solve a problem. In both Fall and Spring semesters, I had similar results with roughly 75% of students (both semesters) answering the limits at infinity question correctly on the final.

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. 

The Academic Success Center provides in-person tutoring for STEM courses which includes Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Due the discontinuation of Developmental Education courses, there has been a shift in tutoring demand for Gatekeeper and STEM courses in semester Fall 2019. With the collaboration with STEM faculty, the ASC is developing and experimenting new intiatives on how to support the increase in demand of tutoring for these subjects. 

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Helping students find success is the goal of teaching. By adding a short preview assignment allowing students to focus on upcoming larger essay assignments in Canvas, they learn the importance of taking the time to review assignment instructions before starting in, they think about what they're being asked to do, what challenges they might face while working on the asisgnment, what resources they can access for help, and ask specific questions of their instructor. Instructors can immediately respond and clarify or realign student preceptions setting students up for success.