African American Women Voices: The Works of Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison
Presented by Alejandra Almada Martinez, Marian Bulnes, Barbara Silvera Ramirez, Laura Santos, and Giselle Valdes, MDC Students
Faculty Mentor: Professor Emily Sendin
In our presentation, we will explore different themes and subjects of interest featured in Toni Morrison’s novels (in particular The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise). These individual yet connected discussions will be conducted by analyzing each text through critical literary theories, and comparing and contrasting them with Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day.
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Big Book "Animal Castle"
Presented by Shayna Cervantes, MDC Student
Faculty Mentor: Professor Anna Guerrero
The assignment I am presenting today is an original Big Book I created for the RED3013 course in the School of Education. A Big Book is an enlarged version of a Reading book. It is usually illustrated with big letters. I created this Big Book for the class I was observing for my clinical hours. I based my book on what was being taught in my clinical classroom. Students were learning about animal habitats and weather in Science and learning rhyming words in Reading. I decided to make my book on these three lessons. I brainstormed many ideas and after applying the content that I learned from my RED3013 course I was able to create a book that touched on the topics being taught in the classroom. I created my book about a kingdom where many animals lived freely, and then a storm came and all the animals had to take shelter in the castle. They weathered the storm in the castle where they created a friendship and bond. During the making of my book I had to keep in mind the Exceptional students in this class had: 5 ELL students, 1 with Autism and 1 with ADHD. I created my book from felt material and used felt stickers to accommodate these students. I also used bright colors, pictures, and rich vocabulary to gain the attention and focus of a Kindergarten class. This book was especially made for this class, I based it on lessons they where being taught, and they really enjoyed it.
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On β Entropy Metrics Distortion in the Lattice of Partitions
Presented by Juan Martinez, Estefano Reyes, and Marcos Rivas, MDC Students
Faculty Mentors: Professors Jyrko Correa-Morris and Belarmino Gonzalez
Metrics on the lattice of partitions play a crucial role not only in the formal study of partially ordered sets but in many applications, which include but are not limited to social choice rules, classification and learning, and decision support tools. Although these metrics have been studied in a considerable extent from both a statistical and algebraic perspectives, there are some characteristic features of their behavior that are still uncovered. In this paper, we focus on one of the most important classes of metrics on the lattice of partitions: β -entropy metrics. Particularly, we compare the structural behavior of the β -entropy metrics through the analysis of distortion and the impact the parameter β has on the behavior of these metrics.
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"Who's Zooming Who?" Humanizing Your Online Instruction
Presented by Professor Omar Figueras
Instructor-student interactions and quality and timely instructor feedback in remote and online learning are prominent faculty behaviors that correlate to and impact student retention and student satisfaction (Riedel et al. 2016). Whether the course is synchronous, asynchronous, or blended, or planning to design and create videos, audios, or learning modules, the virtual space instructors occupy through their presence, empathy, and awareness, assist and encourage students to connect with them and course material.
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Integrated Developmental Modules
Presented by Professor Tricia Foster
In 2014, State Bill 1720 mandated reforms in remedial education, providing student exemptions to remedial course work and directed colleges to develop comprehensive advising plans and accelerated remedial programs. However, the change in legislation did not change the need for ongoing supplemental support in writing.
In this presentation, Professor Foster discusses the use of a flipped-class model, to integrate developmental modules into core courses to help students succeed. The presentation demonstrates how this process works via the example of “grammar refreshers,” blended modules designed to provide developmental content concurrent with ENC1101.
The “grammar refreshers” present grammar concepts that students will be able to review at their own pace and practice at home before applying them during in-class writing workshops. These developmental modules provide valuable metalanguage that will allow students and instructors to address writing issues with a common vocabulary. Instructors can then use “glossing techniques” to help students identify and correct their own grammatical errors while applying this newly acquired metalanguage and foundational knowledge. Developmental modules in conjunction with “glossing techniques” allow instructors to better teach grammar “in context” of writing assignments, a more effective way of improving student writing without losing focus of higher order writing concerns like purpose, audience, genre, organization, development, etc., the core of freshman composition.
Using the flipped-class, blended module technique can be applied to other freshman courses to help remediate fundamental knowledge gaps, or at the beginning of more advanced courses as a refresher of basic concepts taught in pre-requisite courses.
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