Blended Learning Pilot End of Week 2
Me outside of school:
- Jing screencasting
- Google site reading and commenting
- Goorulearing.org collection re-ordering
- Assessment co-creating
- End of project survey writing
- Frantically laptop cart fundraising (1/3 of the way there as of this writing)
Students in my classes:
- Braingenie watching and quiz taking
- PhET simulation running
- 3x more labs doing
- MIT style group problem solving
- GoSoapBox class discussing
- Google site documenting
- Administrator tour tolerating
I ran an electronic survey today in two of the blended classes; sixty two responses in all. I asked students to compare the various types of learning that we do in class in this new blended method against our prior unit that I taught in a traditional fashion. Here are some of my takeaways.
1. Students did not feel particuarly strongly about any of the questions I asked them. 3 out of 5 was the most popular answer for questions in which they compared their learning in our current blended unit on thermal physics to their learning in the prior traditional unit on waves. Below is an example.
On a scale of 1 to 5, compared to your learning about waves in our most recent waves unit, how much did you learn about thermal physics?
2. Students liked that they were able to do about 3x as many labs.
Compared to the hands-on activities in the waves unit, how was your experience with hands-on activities in thermal physics?
3. The students, while patient with the many technical issues the 3 year-old Macbooks and 4 year old Eee netbooks we borrowed had, expressed their frustration with the technology not working in the open feedback section of the survey.
4. Many students also commented that they would like to have a blend that included a little bit more lecture than what they experienced in this pilot. I lectured for no more than 5 minutes of a 100 minute block throughout the 2 week pilot.
More to come.
I find it interesting that they would want more lecture. I’m sure you’ll find that sweet spot of “just enough” lecture.
The How Much Learned survey is surprising too. Maybe they absorbed more information than they thought they did and they don’t realize it yet because it was absorbed naturally and not by going home and memorizing the material? I’d like to see how that aligns with any assessments you may have. Did you get better results compared to last year’s traditional block?
FYI: some of the links are broken.
In a traditional school, lecture is a dominant mode of instruction. I think kids don’t necessarily prefer lecture over other methods, but I do know that they like consistency. Their perception might be different next school year when I improve on this model with what I’ve learned, and when they know no other way (for my class anyway).
I think I fixed the links. Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments, Roderick. I really appreciate it.
Maybe their desire for more lecture could be solved by “flipping” the classroom and having lecture via video outside of class. Might even find some Khan Academy vids that would be helpful.
Indeed, David. That is the plan. Unfortunately for me, Khan’s target misses all of the conceptual aspects of physics. I have a lot of screen casting work to do this summer. Thanks for the comment.