Packing Slip 
item |
Engaging Students through Animated PowerPoint Notes |
contact |
Phong Chau (Glendale Community College) phong.chau@gcmail.maricopa.edu |
college(s) |
Glendale Community College |
discipline(s) |
Mathematics |
summary |
I will create animated lecture notes in PowerPoint for Intermediate Algebra course (MAT 120/121), which will include graphs, diagrams, pictures, animation, and links to important websites. |
details |
This project will center on the creation of comprehensive lecture notes in PowerPoint for Intermediate Algebra classes. I intend to create the lecture notes (about 30 lessons) for the entire course. This will be comprehensive lesson notes, which includes animation, graphs,diagrams, links to other important/related websites and application Problems. These notes will motivate students to learn with a bigger interest by helping them visualize the problems being discussed and grabbing their attentions. Students will focus more as these PowerPoint presentations will attract them. ------------------------------------------------------------ How did the project improve, advance, or enhance student learning? Please provide specific examples. ------------------------------------------------------------ Math is often rated as a boring subject with abstract concepts and complex formulas. Thus, engaging students in a classroom setting and motivating students to learn are the most important yet challenging tasks to ensure their success in this subject. PowerPoint lecture notes that include all the highlighted topics, formulas and steps to solve a problem with animation, would help student memorize the formula more easily, understand the concept more thoroughly and retain what they have learnt much longer. When solving a complicated (word) problem, an animated presentation would be an effective way to vividly illustrate the important points to students. Sketching a good graph by hand or drawing a clear picture on the board is hard and time-consuming yet important and necessary for helping students to visualize the problem. Using PowerPoint will allow more time for instructors to explain the problem more clearly as well as for students to focus more on understanding the concept in class. Better understanding of Mathematics using a more visual approach will also lead to greater student retention and student success in math classes. It is also hoped that both adjunct faculty and residential faculty can take advantage of these animated notes to achieve teaching excellence. Overall, this technology-enhanced instructional lesson will bring together text and images in a way that makes both the study and teaching of math more enjoyable and successful. ------------------------------------------------------------ How did you evaluate your project's success? What did it tell you? ------------------------------------------------------------ At this point, I couldn't evaluate my project's success without students' inputs. So, I will use these notes in the next couple of semesters and get students' feedbacks by giving out a brief survey about how PowerPoint lecture notes help them understand the concept. ------------------------------------------------------------ What is your plan to share this project with others? ------------------------------------------------------------ I plan to present my work to all math faculty during our regular semester meeting. I will attend and present it in national conference or regional meeting (like AMATYC conference, AMS meetings, arizMATYC meetings). I would also put links to these notes on my website for other campus faculty to use in their teaching. ------------------------------------------------------------ What, if anything, will happen in the future with this project? ------------------------------------------------------------ These lecture notes will continue to be used in my Intermediate Algebra classes, and will be used by any residential and adjunct faculty in MAT 120/121 classes. ------------------------------------------------------------ What, if anything, would you do differently? ------------------------------------------------------------ I would probably work with someone or in a group on these lecture notes since it's a very time-consuming task. Another option is to create animated lecture notes for those sections that are hard to understand. It's very hard to find application problems for certain topics in intermediate algebra (like simplifying rational expressions). So, I would only create notes for some selected sections. Note! As a professional courtesy to the owner of this package, if you use some aspect of this package or have some thoughts about it, please share your feedback via the comments form below. |
web links |
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/learngrant/ |
shareback |
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extra |
Last modified: Aug-18-2009 Date created: Aug-02-2009 Visitor count: 442 Dublin Core Metadata record  This package is included in the Maricopa Learning Grants special collection. |
Maricopa Learning eXchange
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=2280
