Since I am mainly focusing my efforts towards improving student outcomes in statistics, dealing with the anxiety that is associated with the topic is my top priority. Many students show up terrorized when they discover that the course involves math. I try my best to assuage their fears, but I am not always effective. As I mentioned previously, bringing in former students who can discuss their personal experience with the course helps to enable the growth mindset. Also, starting the class with a guided meditation could help bring down the levels of anxiety.
Another change that needs to be made is getting more tutors on campus that can help with PSY 220. There have been times where no tutors were available since it is a new course. I could not send students to the Math lab since the course doesn’t fall under Math. It got so bad in the past that I had to hold group study sessions. Unfortunately, I have other research and administrative responsibilities that also take up my time. Getting home sometimes at 11:30 PM because I am helping my class study is not always ideal.
I do scaffold the computer assignments that I give using SPSS. This has been very helpful to the students learning how to run basic tests. I will continue to do this as I plan to incorporate projects in R. I think the best way to do this is to give a series of very short lessons (starting out with something as simple as loading an excel spreadsheet in R studio). I probably can scaffold my lecture material better as well. Generally, I spend 1-2 lectures teaching a different topic. I could break these lessons up a bit more which would slow down the course. It would frustrate the better students but could assist the struggling students.
The fact that my classes tend to be multimodal in terms of ability is tricky. I was thinking of maybe adding an optional recitation to the class. This would entail making the class 4 hours/4 credits with one of those hours a recitation. This would allow students that need the extra time the ability to build confidence and develop a growth mindset. I am not sure how the BMCC admin would like this idea, but if we want to improve the outcomes in these classes, I believe that it is needed.
