All resources in OER for CTE

Using Learning Assistants in Oral Assessments

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Undergraduate Learning Assistants -- prepared to work productively with students -- have been used to facilitate ungraded, voluntary oral assessments offered prior to exams. Oral assessments last one hour, and are offered prior to the three course exams. Orals are geared to improve student understanding and allow instructors to work with students on an individual basis to address misunderstandings. Students attend oral assessments in groups of 5-6 and work at a board to answer scripted, conceptual questions. The facilitator asks the initial scripted questions as well as follow-up probing questions and encourages students to work together.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Authors: Mary Nelson, Stephine Chasteen

Using Positive and Negative Numbers in Context

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This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to understand and use directed numbers in context. It is intended to help identify and aid students who have difficulties in ordering, comparing, adding, and subtracting positive and negative integers. Particular attention is paid to the use of negative numbers on number lines to explore the structures: starting temperature + change in temperature = final temperature final temperature Đ change in temperature = starting temperature final temperature Đ starting temperature = change in temperature.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Using Unit Rates to Save Money

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Planning for the future is a difficult task for most. This lesson ask the learner to participate in role-play and to assume the role of someone who has just graduated and accepted a job and to develop a budget where the goal is to save for a vacation to be taken in a year’s time. The role that the learner is asked to assume is Madison. The name was chosen specifically because it is a unisex name. The character, Madison, has just graduated, but the story intentionally does not reveal the credential that was achieved. The learner is asked to develop a budget with the salary and withheld taxes already established. For learners living in a rural area, the salary may seem high for a recent graduate, but for a learner from an urban area, the salary may seem low. Along with assuming this identity comes the tasks of making decisions for him/her. The actual math problems have definitive answers which are provided for the instructor, but the decisions enable the learner to develop a unique budget. Unit rate is used to help the learner visualize the decisions that are made on a daily basis that may impact savings. Problems included ask the learner to make decisions about housing, transportation, health, and spending. The variety of problems enable the learner to compute unit rates and understand how quantities can be measured in different units. The instructor is a facilitator only, examples of calculations are included in the materials for guidance.

Material Type: Lesson

Author: Cheryl Keener

The Volume of Spheres and Cylinders

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This is a set of three, one-page problems about calculating the volume of objects. Learners may calculate the volume of an asteroid, Vesta, or the stacking of satellites inside an atlas V rocket nose cone. Options are presented so that students may learn about the Dawn mission to asteroid Vesta through a NASA press release or about NASA's investigation of comets by viewing a NASA eClips video [5 min.]. This activity is part of the Space Math multi-media modules that integrate NASA press releases, NASA archival video, and mathematics problems targeted at specific math standards commonly encountered in middle school.

Material Type: Lesson

Voter Experiment

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This resource consists of a Java applet and expository text. The applet is a simulation of the voter experiment, an interacting partile system that consists of a rectangular array of sites. At each discrete time unit, a site is chosen at random, a neighboring site is chosen, and the color of the first site is changed to that of the neighbor. The applet illustrates clustering of the colors and convergence to consensus.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive, Simulation

Author: Kyle Siegrist

The War of the Worlds, Fake News, and Media Literacy Primary Source Unit

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The following unit offers multiple entry points into developing an understanding of media literacy. The unit framework and primary sources can be integrated into classrooms of grades 4-12. Each lesson has student objectives that can be accomplished within 40 minute periods over the course of several weeks. A midpoint writing assessment, whole class capstone debate, and final independent writing assessment are included. Support materials are integrated into the lessons, and the primary source document pages can be found at the end of the unit guide.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Case Study, Diagram/Illustration, Interactive, Lesson, Lesson Plan, Primary Source, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study

Author: The Rockefeller Archive Center

WeBWorK Problems for Linear Algebra

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This set of problems for Linear Algebra in the open-source WeBWorK mathematics platform was created under a Round Eleven Mini-Grant for Ancillary Materials Creation. The problems were created for an implementation of the CC-BY Lyrix open textbook A First Course in Linear Algebra. Also included as an additional file are the selected and modified Lyryx Class Notes for the textbook. Topics covered include: Linear Independence Linear Transformations Matrix of a Transformation Isomorphisms Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors Diagonalization Orthogonality

Material Type: Interactive

Authors: Beata Hebda, Hashim Saber