Blending Student Evals

Here is my students reaction to a couple of questions regarding our AP biology blended learning class this year.   Their comments were unedited in any way   

Q:  What did you think of how the class was done this year with 50% online and 50% face to face instruction? What did you like about it? What didn’t you like about it? 

a1. The structure of the class was very convenient.  I obviously liked how I could do my work whenever.  I prefer the traditional classroom setting to the online setting, but I don't dislike the online setting. 

a2 I liked it, it gave me more time to do the assignments on my own time, the videos were really great but i felt like we didn't get that in depth but that is probably because of how much material we had to cover. 

a3. I thought it was really good! I feel like I learned a lot more from the video lectures than I did when we came into class. I think it is because i took notes for the videos, but sometimes i didn't think there was a whole lot of benefit from coming to class. I think a lot of people struggled with knowing when things were due what the requirements were for some assignments. It was probably our own faults though. 

a4.I think it was a good idea. I appreciated the ability to work through things on my own. I would have appreciated more control over my study, such as the ability to skip homework over stuff I understand already, and, to be honest, I thought the video notes could be shortened by half or three-quarters without losing any of the information. However, these are my own feelings, and I do not think it would be beneficial for an entire class to implement them 

a5 The online was not my favorite because I think that during class, we would have done more with the time that we had than we did online. With online, the assignments were short and sometimes I did not have time outside of school to do the review that we were supposed to do. The reason I saved the review for home was so that I could remeber it better the next day when we had a quiz or whatnot. 

a6.  I liked that we were able to take our work home and work on it there because I work a lot better when I'm at home by myself then I do in a class room setting because I get distracted really easy and can't focus but at home I can do whatever it is that im suppossed to be doing because I focus and just listen to music and don't talk to anyone. And I liked doing all the labs in class. 

Q: Your grade aside, evaluate your personal efforts in this class. Do you feel you worked as hard as you needed to? Do you think that the format of the class was a hindrance or help to you in this way.

a1. I do not think I worked as hard as I needed to.  I think the format of the class caused me to postpone work more than I would have in the traditional classroom setting

a2. I feel like I could have worked harder to get a good grade but I did in fact learn a lot and that matters. 

a3. The setup this year in my opinion allowed me to work harder because we only met once every two days. If I could not complete the homework on a specific night I had an extra day to catch up and watch the notes. However, the last few weeks I did slow down more and not pay as much attention because it seemed easier than the beginning of the year.

I do think that many of these comments and issues could be applied to flipped classroom also.!

Experimentation week

So this week we decided to experiment with the flipped classroom in our biology class a bit.  The first part of the week was the "old way"  I spent 30 minutes in class lecturing on the immune system (specific immunity, B and T cells etc.) and the students spent 20 minutes working on an activity related to it.  And we spent the last 15 minutes watching a discovery channel video on flu.  The next day was a repeat except we discussed vaccines, HIV and finished the movie with discussion.  for 18 years I have mostly taught this way.  For many of my colleagues I was a GREAT teacher those 2 days.  I am a good lecturer with good and interesting stories, the students asked a few questions that were pertinent.  I had a ticket out the door and they seemed to know what we did.
                                                    The problem was.....BOREDOM!!!! 
The level of energy in the classroom was 2 on a scale from 1-10 and the 2 was because I am an energetic speaker.  As stated previously, there was longggg minutes with nothing except students frantically writing down notes and copying graphs into their notes.  They were super relieved to put away their notes and move on to something else.  The results of the next day's formative assessment quiz were about where they are no matter how they are given the material. Some did great because they looked it over, some did poorly because they didn't.  There was and is no measurable grading difference between flipping and not.  The biggest difference is the ENERGY in the classroom and the amount of individual learning that was going on. 

The last day we decided to try mastery learning.  The assignment was to watch the notes on respiratory system.  The only way to move on was to get 100% on the quiz.  They took the quiz, if they did not receive a score of 100% they had to review the notes {some had to watch them yet :) } and when they felt prepared, redo it.  If they once again did not, they had to speak with us about it and discuss what they did not know. 

If they received a score of 100%, they went on to a lab on the effects of secondhand smoking on baby mouse lungs (inquiry because we have not yet talked about alveoli and how gases are exchanged with the blood).  The energy and learning in the room was awesome.  Questions about what actually happens to the oxygen we inhale, misconceptions revealed about what lungs actually do for you, etc, etc.  All students were on task for the 70 minutes with something about respiration. They could not "check out" mentally.  Our classes are mainstreamed biology 9th grade with some of the top 9th graders combined with up to 15 special education students (LD, EI, POHI).  The hard part is that we had to repeat many of the same things to students because we were talking to them individually (or in groups of 2).  The good part about THAT is that we believe students will remember better if you are talking directly to them as they try to figure out a problem rather than listening to a group lecture.

Next week, we are going to survey the students regarding our experiment.  Results will be posted here! 

Comments welcomed!