Monthly Archives: December 2010

The Real Deal: A Different Kind of Hybrid

Education reform, Teaching,

THE REAL DEAL: A different kind of hybrid

2010-12-30

by Richard White

This site has been devoted to discussing the hybrid classroom, in which a traditional classroom-based curriculum has online components as an integral part of the course. For three weeks in November, however, my science students participated in a different kind of hybrid experience.

Science courses, and in particular Advanced Placement science courses, are a tricky animal. On the one hand, we’ve got people’s natural curiosity regarding the world about them, and an innate desire to play with stuff and figure things out–these qualities appear to be hardwired into us, evolutionarily. People love science, or at least the idea of science: from Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week”, to explosions on Mythbusters, to dropping a few Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, most people find this stuff interesting on at least some level.

On the other hand, you’ve got your typical science course. It takes place in a classroom, and there are notes to be taken, facts to learn, and tests that demand no small amount of regurgitation, all at a breakneck pace that leaves little time for reflection or a deeper consideration of things. Once a week or so there’s a lab, in which the students typically follow a set of instructions–more or less successfully, it is hoped–and subsequent write a short report summarizing the experience. It’s kind of cool getting to play with the equipment, but… does it really count as science? Where’s the investigation, and the thrill of discovery? Where’s the fun?

The sad truth is that it’s extraordinarily difficult to come up with good laboratory experiences that are meaningful, relevant, appropriate, fun, and safe. My friend Karen Wilson, a chemistry teacher, had the misfortune to have a student in her class who chose to “leave the path” during an independent project, and literally blew off his hand. She spent several years of her professional career defending herself in the subsequent lawsuit: ‘Yes,’ she’d demonstrated proper safety procedures; ‘no,’ she hadn’t authorized the experiment that led to the loss of his limb. The suit against her ultimately failed, but not before it had taken its toll on her.

Against all odds, then, my AP Physics students are having a little fun in lab right now. Their assignment for this most recent unit is to a) theoretically develop the equations for the rolling motion of a hoop, disk, and sphere; b) develop an experimental procedure and collect data regarding the real world motion of these objects, and c) analyze and reconcile the experimental results with what is predicted by theory. Okay, that might not sound that interesting to you, but for them, it’s a surprising breath of fresh air.

Walker and Daniel have created a black-and-white backdrop for their rolling object, which will allow them to determine position data for their rolling object. Time data will be pulled from the 30 frames-per-second rate of the digital recording of the motion.

Why? Why are they more interested in this lab?

  1. They have 3 weeks to work on this lab.
    Even if it’s going to be a little more work in the long run, they’re appreciating the fact that they get to focus on one thing for a little while.
  2. They have an open-ended problem to figure out.
    Granted, it’s not THAT open-ended–they are clear specifications for what’s expected. But the path they’re going to take to get there, from what data they want to collect to how, specifically, they’re going to go about collecting that data, is completely up to them. Seriously, when I was introducing the lab, they could barely wait for me to shut up so that they could start brainstorming, planning, drawing sketches, and assembling preliminary set-ups to test how feasible they’re data collection strategies might be. It was amazing.
  3. This is a high-stakes assignment.
    In line with the requirement that they’ll be submitting a very formal write-up on this one–a word-processed document, with equations, data tables, and graphs all electronically created–there’s more on the line: this assignment is worth the equivalent of a full test, and points like that are hard to come by in my class. For those students who need just a little more incentive to do a good job–in addition to the inherent appeal–there’s the promise of points.
Laurel and Julian in version 1 of their experiment, in which a metal rolling object momentarily contacts two wires, connected to an audio interface that they've plugged into their computer, allowing them to measure position and time data.

This kind of “authentic assessment” or “performance-based learning” is not entirely new of course–not if you’ve been in the game long enough to recognize those expressions, which received some buzz when they were proffered years ago. And this strategy for fostering learning isn’t a silver bullet for highest-risk students who find themselves completely disenchanted with anything associated with school or education.

But for teachers and students who are looking for something a little different, this is a great way to add some real world legitimacy to your curriculum, AND have a little fun in the process.

What Real World experiences are you able to build into your teaching?

“Just in Time” Learning

Distance-learning, Education reform, Teaching, ,

“Just In Time” Learning

by Richard White

2010-12-06

“‘Hybrid classroom?’ Seriously? What effect could Internet use possibly have on student learning in my classes?”

I’m SO glad you asked. I have data on that. I’m in the process of running an experiment.

I teach physics, a subject that has some reputation as being a little tricky to understand sometimes. Typically, teaching physics works something like this:

  1. I present material in class: discussions, lectures, demonstrations, sample problems.
  2. Students go home, try to do assigned homework problems, and get stuck.
  3. Students come back the next day with questions, and I spend time in class helping them clear up their misunderstandings.

It’s a time-honored process, and one that works on some levels. “Struggling with the material” is something that all learning requires, as each of us figure out how to fit new ideas into our previous understanding of the world. Constructing that new knowledge requires effort, and it’s absolutely part of my job to assist students in that process.

After 15 years of teaching physics, thoughI came to realize that there was a problem with the current homework system. Ater 15 years of teaching physics, I figured out that often, students were getting waylaid by relatively trivial difficulties, usually a problem-solving technique, or a strategy, or a “trick” that we’d discussed in class and that they hadn’t quite learned how to apply. It wasn’t that they had absolutely no idea of how to solve the problem—they just needed a little push, a little hint on what to do next, and the answers to the odd-numbered problems in the back of the book weren’t enough.

I had clear data that the students were getting stuck, based on the number of students missing at least one assignment, and—for those students—the number of homework assignments they were missing.

I made what I thought was a generous offer: the homework solutions were available in my office so that students could come in during office hours to take a look at them… but that didn’t really help them at night. At night was when they were working on the problems. At night was when they needed the help.

So I made the solutions available online.

It was a simple step, really, and I fully expected that a lot of the problems with “incomplete and missing homework assignments” would go away. I made sure to communicate the fact that these solutions were available for students to use in helping their progress after they’d attempted a problem; these were not to be copied. But there was that risk.

I’d hoped that the homework scores would improve, and improve they did:

That’s not much of a success story there, of course: “give students who haven’t been turning in homework the answers, and they’ll turn in more homework.” Great headline.

Here’s where things get interesting, though. Students both years took the unit test, with the following results:

Test scores went UP. Way up. On unassisted assessments of their learning, students demonstrated that their understanding of the material had improved by a whopping 10%, because (I believe) they were able to get some assistance with their homework when they were doing it, and not hours or days after the fact.

Of course, it’s well-known that the WWW is a great place for a motivated student to explore and learn. See the Wall Street Journal’s Turning Kids From India’s Slums Into Autodidacts for some interesting examples of this. Money quote:

Education, though, feels like one of those things that has to be top-down: There has to be a teacher and a taught. But plenty of people educate themselves. Is it possible for everybody to be an autodidact, now that knowledge is so accessible online?

The premise of the article is so radical that most classroom teachers may not feel that it has any bearing on what we do day-to-day. But my ongoing experiment has convinced me giving people access to new tools to guide their studies—even something as mundane as homework solutions— can have a powerful effect on the learning experience.

There are other things we can do as well. More about that next week.