danaleeling

The student evaluation numeric survey sections of strongly agree to strongly disagree provide numeric averages for each metric. While these numeric values help identify areas of relative strength and weakness, they do not always provide insight into how to change a value. One can see that a value is lower than other values, but why that value is lower may not be clear. The comments on the evaluation can sometimes help provide information on why a value is stronger or weaker. Of most interest are areas of weakness so that those might be addressed. The survey had comments for each of the three main sections: instructor, course, and course materials. The comments for each section were aggregated under general areas of concern. Although over 800 evaluations were submitted, many students chose not to make any comments. The most common comments were along the lines of "everything was good" or "none" as in "no comments." The broader picture is that in general stu...

Students in SC 130 Physical Science were surveyed on their favorite and least favorite laboratory along with other affective domain assessment questions. Only seven surveys came in, and some responses were left blank. Lab nine was done as a resonance tube, this was a new approach and may be explored in the future when rainy days confine the class to the laboratory.  Laboratory seven comments refer to the laboratory having to be done along the covered walkway west of administration due also to rain. Students who arrived more than a half hour late did not realize that the class was just to the west.  Attitude towards science At the start of the term students had a dominantly negative attitude towards science as a subject. At term end all of the respondents had a positive attitude. This is perhaps the most important and consistent result of SC 130 Physical Science: a shifting of attitudes towards science among non-science majors. Motivation to understand a field only comes with a...

Blank values in a Canvas grade book are not counted against a student in the score displayed in Canvas but may be counted against the student on import into a Student Information System. For assignments with no submission or submitted on paper, grades are entered manually by the instructor. If the instructor chooses not to enter a value and leaves the cell blank, this null value counts as a zero in the Final Score but not in the Current Score. While Canvas displays the Current Score in the grade book, some Student Information Systems import the Final Score. If there are null values in a student's grade record, then the Current Score displayed in Canvas will be higher than the Final Score imported into the SIS. Although the difference may be small, if the difference crosses a grade boundary then the Current Grade displayed in Canvas will not be the same as the Final Grade imported into the SIS. As of this writing, the Canvas grade book is displaying the Current Score, in this instan...

Students in courses at the college anonymously submitted responses to a student evaluation survey. Students were instructed to fill out the survey once for each course they were in. The data below derives from 736 surveys.  Submissions per day The drop in evaluation submissions suggests the bulk of evaluations that will be submitted have been submitted. The number submitted spring 2022 was 1058, thus the 736 number represents a drop in submissions. Neither number is close to the maximum number of possible submissions. The main grades table in Canvas has 5702 rows - which suggests the theoretical maximum number of evaluations. This suggests a 13% submission rate for evaluations, leaving considerable room for improvement. Although the submission rate is low, the sample size is sufficient to look at patterns in the responses received. Although evaluations can still be submitted by students, there is potential benefit in having a look at thees numbers prior to the winter break. This al...

 “My eighth grade math teacher told me not to rely on a calculator since I won’t have one in my pocket all the time when I grow up,” Phillip Dawson, an expert who studies exam cheating at Deakin University, told Recode. “We all know how that turned out." - Vox: Recode . Prompt. Technology: Android mobile phone In high school I had two Texas Instruments calculators with glowing red LEDs, one on each hip. The rechargeable batteries only lasted 20 minutes or so. Now I am typing on a device that has more computing power than a mainframe computer of my youth, a device that also rides on my hip but has a multi-day battery. Oh, and it also has a calculator.  This is early days of AI, but the educational impact over the lifetime of our students will be more profound than that from calculators to smartphones. First paragraph of ChatGPT response The first reaction of educators will be to ban the use of AI, just as math instructors banned calculators back in my youth. And in that era whe...

With the push to take all of my courses paperless, the last remaining piece of the paperless puzzle was the ethnobotany field final examination. The background to the final and the set up work for the ethnobotany field final were described in an earlier article . Facilitating the delivery of the final in the field was the acquisition in late spring 2022 of a Tripltek all weather tablet. The all weather tablet let me keep track of the order in which plants were listed on the final examination, record attendance, and make notes on changes made in the field.  The class met at the Learning Resource Center to ensure the students were logged onto the network and the  Canvas Student app . Only one student had not logged into the app prior to class. For reasons that were unclear, the Canvas Student app on the student's older iPhone would not log into Canvas. The work around was for the student to log into Canvas using Safari on their phone.  Getting set to go into the field began...