Week 1 April 3 - April 10

My name is James Namekata. I am currently working at Riverside Community College as an associate professor of mathematics. I also teach the karate courses at RCC and Crafton Hills College.

This is my 4th ETEC class so I am fairly new to the program. I am interested in learning how to use technology more in my classroom. I am also interested in teaching online math courses at RCC in the future and I thought this program will help me develop my courses.

As far as my topic for my masters project, I don't have a topic already selected. I am actually in no real rush to get through this program. I will probably progress through, one or two classes a quarter.

Some ideas that I have for possible project ideas are developing a web enhanced remedial math course in which the students in the class would attend lecture and take notes during class, but complete all of their homework using an internet based program. I have completed in ETEC 544 five articles for my literature review, but I am not quite sure if this is the area that I want to pursue. I believe that I would have to do a comparison between this newly developed web enhanced course with the traditional remedial course. In order to complete this comparison, I would have to use "common" exams and a "common final exam." My belief is that I would have to design multiple choice exams for this comparison process because free response exams would be difficult to grade.

Another possible idea is to develop a completely online remedial math course which includes homework, exams, and podcasts with instruction. I could use the publishers videos to help explain different topics. As far as homework and the structure of the course, I would probably use WebCT because that is what we use at RCC. But as far as the other issues, I am not quite sure what other details I would need to include.

If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

James