Todd GrzechCHEP

I'm looking forward to having real time video conferencing with our students in the near future. Text based interaction leaves alot to be desired and it is difficult to get the students engaged. I'm hoping that once the students "meet" with us in a interactive video that they feel more encouraged to post questions in our text based forum, since they will now have a feel for who they are messaging.

I have serious concerns about the success of our students in this new online learning environment. Our students do not fit the demographic stated in this course for typical online distance learners who are 25+, often in their 30s and working full time. That type of student has the dedication and maturity to succeed in a self-paced online environment. It’s difficult enough to identify students in our on-campus classrooms who are struggling to understand the material. They often don’t have the “self-advocacy” to ask for help when they need it. As the course mentioned, there is no back row to… >>>

I had a student who academically failed undercar – twice, but returned and managed to achieve a passing grade on her third attempt. During her first time in the course I noticed her poor grades and recommended she stay for some tutoring. She declined, and it wasn’t until the end of the course that the reality of her failing grades seemed to get her attention. Unfortunately it was too late to bring her grades up sufficiently to pass.

The very next course she was in my class again. I met with her at the end of the first day and… >>>

While many of the other methods of dealing with stress, or better yet, eliminating stressors, are great ideas, I have found that I was crreating some of those stressors myself because of the way I percieved events at work, not the events themselves. For instance, when I first started as an instructor I would take it very personally when a student performed poorly in my class, to the point where it caused a lot of stress and I know I laid awake nights thinking of it. I was creating stress in my life about things that are not within my… >>>

Some of the new lab sheets we have developed make it much easier to keep up with grading by providing designated spaces for conclusions based on the students tests. The most relevent measurements are in the right-hand column and the conclusions are at the bottom of each page. Rather than have to read the entire labs sheets with dozens of meter measurements, we simply scan the sheet for completeness and look at the two measurements on the lower right-hand column. Then be certain that the studnets's conclusion or diagnoses matches these last two measurements. This is especially helpfull for large… >>>

This list idea is so simple but I think it might be a solution for me. I'm so busy some times that I find myself trying to do too many things at one time and forgetting things. Other times when I do have a free moment I find myself walking around in a haze wondering "now what was it I was supposed to do?", and accomplishing little, or focusing on the wrong (least important) things on my imaginary list. Now... where do I keep the to-do list where it will be handy? I don't have a "desk" and work in… >>>

Actually I agree completely. We removed our review sheets for some time and unfortunately without the "crutch" our failure rates climbed steadily and students were dropping like flies. It would seem that many of our students aren't willing to put the effort into their education that we would like them to. I've assigned reading and had as few as two or three students read a chapter in the text book. They want the easiest way or the highway. We were forced to bring back the review sheets and we've seen a steady increase in success rates. It is what it… >>>

After having read through this material and it making perfect sense to me I find myself increasingly disappointed with the evaluation processes we use to evaluate our students. Other than observing students performance in lab situations as best we can, which is difficult to accomplish reliably with larger class sizes and the students working in groups, we offer no other formative evaluation methods. I suppose if a student is failing tests throughout the course that would also fall into a formative evaluation method, but we then seem more fucused on helping that student do a better job of memorizing the… >>>

I wanted to share an approach to reaching different learners through the use of technical drawing excersizes. One of the more difficult tests we have is on cylinder head designs, componets and service. While performing the usual "lecture" which reaches auditory learners well, and showing powerpoint presentations provided I have added a lengthy drawing of the componenets on the white board using many colors and labels. I ask the students to do their best to duplicate my drawing in their note books. I change the drawing three times, adding features and service procedures along the way and ask the students… >>>