Providing student feedback

Applying course content to real world experience so students understand why they are learning an applicable skill. Although using desktop publishing programs such as Adobe InDesign is a critical skill expected in many graphic design occupations, few students understand what desktop publishing is or how important it is. I wanted my EMCC students to experience the "scratch and sniff" effects of producing and publishing print products. So, when I first taught Adobe InDesign in Fall 2016, I arranged for my students to create print products for the Career and Transfer Center.

When teaching Abnormal Psychology I have a number of student outcomes beyond course competencies:  Critical thinking about mental health and mental illness, paradigm shifting, and reducing or eliminating mental health stigma.  I use an extremely high contact and time intensive teaching style in this online class to attempt to achieve these outcomes.

Students do poorly on exam 1. Students participated in a study activity during one class period one week before exam 1. The activity emphasized novel presentation of material (puzzle), repetition, additional study time, interaction with other students and the instructor.  The material studied accounted for about 50% of the first exam. Averages of the exam 1 did not differ from averages of 7 previous classes, but grades of A and B almost doubled in the activity group.

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

This semester I am provided a sample of a successful paper submitted by a 1st year student last semester to test the idea that identifying a peer who succeeded with similar challenges will provoke greater effort and ultimately greater success. For the full background on this CATS please see "Will Providing a Peer Sample Motivate Growth?"

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

This CATS' purpose was to determine if part of an ACC230 exam resulted in a statistically significant difference between an onine course and a F2F course.  In Fall of 2017, I piloted an ACC230 online class.  I wondered if there would be a major grade/score difference on an Inventory Valuation problem using First-In-First-Out (FIFO) and Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) between the two, different, instructional modalities.  I picked this accounting topic because it was used in two prior CATS (candy example).  My hypothesis was that online students would score lower, because learni

Introductory Chemistry (CHM130) instructors have been using a pre/post test at the beginning and end of the semester in the hope of using the data to determine how conceptual understanding changes as a result of instruction. The original test was not personalized to the curriculum with several topics not even addressed and as a result it was insufficient for detecting student misconceptions. A new Concept Inventory (EMCCi) was developed, thanks to an EMCC learning grant, that was personalized to the CHM130 curriculum.

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.

In the 3rd week of PSY 101 students have to complete an assignment critical to college success (locating a research article in an academic journal on a specific topic and providing a summary, APA style reference, & informed opinion).  Recognizing that this task is usually just beyond the students' current abilities, I use extensive scaffolding to support their acquisition of these important skills. Nonetheless, grades on this assignment remain low and approximately 60 % of students are unable to successfully complete the full task.

After several years of teaching writing, it is clear that revision is the most important and most difficult part of the writing process.  I have stopped the traditional process of partnering student up, trading papers, and having them make random corrections.  Now, we correct papers as a class, we have substantive discussions about decisions in writing, and my students are actually learning how to be better writers.  I have used this in my ENG101 and ENG102 courses at EMCC, but this can easily be used in any course that incorporates writing.  I think this would be extrem

EMCC's Honors Department designed the first Exposition Fair to allow all students to showcase their work in different formats including roundtables for students to discuss their work in progress, poster displays, oral presentations and interactive displays.  David Weaver was our keynote speaker and responses from participant surveys evaluating the Exposition Fair were overwhelmingly positive!  Almost two-thirds of survey participants (N=90) reported that they did not know about the Makerspace and strongly agreed that they liked the interactive nature of the fair as well as the var

Statistics elicit overall student angst, which affects grades, attitude, attrition and learning. Although students attended tutoring, were allowed to re-do homework and engaged in interactive classroom experiences, PSY 230 course retention rate remained at 25%. I used a different pedagogical technique this semester - Mastery Learning - which was used successfully in K-12 grades. Rather than a traditional letter grade or percentage on assignments, students received "not yet" grades and instructor feedback. Resubmissions were accepted as many times as necessary to reach mastery.

After completing midterm evaluations, students expressed a desire to have less lecture and more activities. Therefore, I designed and implemented a CATS to assess different approaches to learning in my COM 100 courses (5 sections) over a two-week experimental period. I compared a traditional lecture based approach (control group – 1 section), balanced lecture and interactive learning approach (experimental group 2 sections), and completely interactive learning approach with no lecture (experimental group 2 sections).