danaleeling

Summer 2024 student evaluations featured a new ratings response order Student evaluations of instructor, course, and course materials provide guidance for the institutions on areas of relative strengths and areas where there may be room for improvement. Bearing in mind that old data is not usefully actionable data, the intent of this report is to convey broad themes emerging in the evaluations to decision makers as rapidly as possible.  This report presumes familiarity with the student evaluations form in use at the institution. The responses were converted to numeric values: Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree As a preface, results this term are not directly comparable to prior terms. Data from the past five terms showed that a significant number of students mark the same response to all of the prompts. These students are marking all fives, or all fours, and in some instances, all ones, in response to every rating prompt. These are termed "straights" in t...

The morning dawned cool and wet. As I have done of late, I prepositioned the juggling balls in the classroom. Summer term wrapped up on site swap mathematics. As in the spring I shifted to a preview of the final to tie together the mathematical models encountered on the journey this summer. This doubles as a final preview - without my saying so - and provides a segue to introducing a mathematical model that the students have not yet encountered.  Then I launch into site swap patterns starting with 3. After the students can make correct predictions for 3, I introduce 51. Finally I show that colors can be switched, swapped, between adjacent blanks, sites, for 42. Students are able to demonstrate mastery of site swap mathematics and everyone goes home believing they learned something. And yet they have learned nothing. At least nothing more than they did when they learned to FOIL quadratic equation factors. At this point I have not mentioned juggling nor any re...

In the morning session the PBS Nova special The Great Math Mystery, alternatively titled Mathematics Explains the Universe, opened the unit on mathematical models. This sets the stage to explore a system that involves physics but is not in any physical science textbook. At the start of the laboratory this term I put course student learning outcome number three on the board to help frame the intent of the laboratory, "Students will be able to generate mathematical models for physical science systems and use appropriate mathematical techniques and concepts to obtain quantitative solutions to problems in physical science." Berny measured diameters with the assistance of Etwet. Guidance and directions were intentionally minimal. Although I put the focus on period versus diameter, the order in which data was recorded was up to the students.  Berny hooped while Sru, off screen, recorded data.  After six weeks of using the metric system, one grou...

The morning session was a high speed run from protons, electrons, and neutrons to hydroxide ions. One hour in duration. At which point the students appeared to have hit a limit for new concepts. I always include isotopes to properly explain the fractional atomic mass.  Then there is a sprint through orbitals, spinning electrons, odd numbers of shells, and way to much information for the students to digest. Electron dot diagrams simplify the drawings. The carbon tetrahedron was drawn, demonstrated using the molecular model, and then erased. Must plan the boards better. After showing how two hydrogen share electrons I then built diatomic hydrogen, water, ammonia, and methane. I made use of these to demonstrate the shape of methane due to the 2s electron jumping up into a hybridized p orbital. As an experiment, an accident of the order I encountered these as I sought limes in this post-lime tree era. I started with lime juice...