danaleeling

Laboratory four has been reworked many times. The problems have been many. Fundamentally, linear momentum is not conserved for marbles. Secondly, timing measurements are problematic and plagued by reaction time errors coupling up with very short time intervals. Originally laboratory four attempted to show conservation of momentum for marbles using one into a line of five on a ruler. When this did not go as well as planned, track friction was blamed. WD-40 was used to reduce track friction, but this caused the scotch tape that held the ruler tracks down to release. The WD-40 wound up on everything including laboratory sheets. Results run with lubricated tracks still showed a strong loss of momentum. At this point I realize that rotational momentum was also in play and was definitely not a conservable quantity. The inbound marble stops spinning, while the outbound marble has to spin up. Long tracks were also tried , with no useful improvement in the results. The long...

SC 130 Physical Science began with a introduction on Monday to the syllabus followed by a pre-assessment. I opted to do the pre-assessment day one as the course was full and would not have the churn that a partially filled course would see during the add/drop period. This summer I did not run the course learning expectations instrument. Results on the mathematics pre-assessment were abysmal , so Tuesday began with coverage of the solutions. Then I introduced the metric system, having the students guess their height in meters. I had estimates from one to a hundred. I wrote these on the board and only then brought out the meter sticks. After this I asked the students to guess their mass in kilograms. Those too were written on the board. Then the students used a Tanita unit to mass themselves. These two numbers were used to calculate their body mass index and this led to introducing fundamental measurements and calculated or derived measurements. A hand-out with BMI information for Pa...

The College of Micronesia-FSM has a general education program learning outcome, "Present and interpret numeric information in graphic forms." Basic linear algebraic interpretation is a pre-collegiate algebra skill. This summer eighteen students in MS 101 Algebra and Trigonometry were administered a ten question pre-assessment of their ability to interpret basic linear function values from graphs, and to graph data from a table. All eighteen students have taken and passed MS 100 College Algebra, although some students may have taken the course a number of semesters ago. In general student performance was generally abysmal. The average was 2.76 questions were answered correctly. The question most commonly answered correctly was the plotting of paired xy data presented in tabular format. The median was two questions answered correctly, with no student answering all ten questions correctly. A box plot of the scores out of ten possible shows that 75% of the MS 100 College Algeb...

Having used Schoology for only one term, I was unsure how to roll my marking rubrics over to a new term for a course. The spring 2014 run of physical science had automatically archived when the date I set as end of term arrived. As I had set up the spring term as a sectionless single course, and being more familiar with Engrade, I thought I had to set up a new course. I did not immediately see a way to move course materials over to the new course, so I abandoned that approach and opted to attempt to set up a new section of the archived course. This worked and I was able to copy categories, grading scales, and rubrics from the archived spring section to the summer section. Note that the above screen was accessed from the archived spring section of the course. I was able to set up the summer section dates and name post hoc in the gradebook settings subscreen. Students with pre-existing Schoology logins can join the course by logging in and then using Courses > Join ...

These are my own rough and unofficial notes from the Northern Pacific Environmental Health Association Strategic Planning Meeting held on Pohnpei in May 2014. There was a need identified to bring key actors together to develop a strategic plan. Environmental health touches on many areas – waste management, water, climate change, occupational safety. Consultants in health adaptation for climate change, specialists on vector borne diseases, specialists who advocate community based approaches. Environmental health has a WHO definition . Includes human health, quality of life, that are determined by chemical, physical, biological, social and psychosocial factors in the environment. Assessing, correcting, controlling, and preventing those factors in the environment that can potential affect adversely the health of present and future generations. Environmental health addresses all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related factors impac...

Although twenty-six instructors are registered with the Engrade administrative stub , only 21 were active users spring 2014. These 21 instructors served 895 students in 71 classes spring 2014. Engrade dashboard Engrade reports that of the 895 students, 211 students are failing classes.Engrade provides performance data across multiple terms for three broad performance bands. Engrade performance brackets The student performance numbers, which apparently reflect individual assignment performance rather than course level performance, indicates that 149 students are failing. Some of this difference from the 211 students may be due to the weighting of assignments in the class grade. 279 students (31%) have missing assignments. Missing work is likely to be a contributing factor to course failure. Student performance as tracked by Engrade The student performance bar chart suggests that spring 2014 relative performance was on par with spring 2013. Student performance a...

A revised outline has been proposed for MS 150 Statistics based on a concept that would align course outlines with the assessment systems in place at the college. The revision would see specific student learning outcomes move from the course outline to the course syllabus. The course outline would retain only course level student learning outcome, at one time termed general objectives and later general student learning outcome at the the college. The new outline proposes having three course level student learning outcomes. Students will be able to... Perform basic statistical calculations for a single variable up to and including graphical analysis, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing against an expected value, and testing two samples for a difference of means. Perform basic statistical calculations for paired correlated variables. Engage in data exploration and analysis using appropriate statistical techniques including numeric calculations, graphical approaches, and tests...