Prompt #2: This year what has worked and what hasn't in your classroom? What will you do differently?

     One of the expectations for the the classes I teach was believing students, as uninteresting as the material was, would still attempt to finish it. Economics is an elective class and most students know they could make up the credit with another elective. At some point within the first half of the six week term students stopped doing the classwork. Another idea that has not worked was conducting the class in a mixed high school\college style where I have a notes on a Power Point and instruct them to takes notes in which ever manner they feel is best. None of my students have any note taking ability and have always been instructed to copy word for word what is presented and ignore the information verbally instructed.

What has worked really well was modifying the worksheets and book assignments to a level adequate for the students. I use problems straight from college books and rewrite them for English deficient students and have seen a general decline of questions typically asking "what does the question mean" and more of "does this look correct to you" which is exactly the question I want to hear.

In order to fix the parts that aren't working in my class I may have to adjust my syllabus and point values to increase the weight class assignments have on the overall grade; incentivize the students to do class work by risking possible failure. To fix the second problem, a small class time in note taking instructions in the beginning of t he term would be acceptable to prepare students for this course.