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Less Physics Mo Problems

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Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs.  In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year.  Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home.  I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
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WHEN are you Willing to be Challenged?

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I was listening to the IMMOOC week 1 podcast on the way into work and was struck by something George Couros & Katie Martin were discussing. It was in relation to the peer review process for Katie’s new book Learner Centered Innovation.

They were discussing the idea of feedback as a key during the creation of the book. Since the book is a physical published product, critical feedback after the fact would not be useful to the creation process. But critical feedback along the way, was essential to produce a quality final product.

That led me to think about all of those end of course surveys I have taken and used to administer. They are being given after the fact. How does this information help inform the process during the learning process? Simply put, it doesn’t.  The feedback is too late to affect the intended audience. When, George brings up the idea of timely feedback, we need to take it to heart. But, we also need to be aware of the type of feedback we are soliciting.  Couros tells us to ask ourselves, “Are we just looking for praise or are we looking for feedback that will push us?” Are we ready to be challenged by the feedback we get or are we just looking for affirmation of our current practice?

George and Katie are quick to point out that there needs to be a balance between praise and push in the feedback we get.  We can’t simply be told everything we do is perfect nor should we be told everything we are doing isn’t good enough. We all are doing things that work for our learners, but we all can iterate practices to make them meaningful for learners.

So what can that more immediate feedback look like?

As we begin each instructional unit, I like to take a few minutes to have students provide me with some feedback on a few questions regarding our previous unit.  I did it yesterday in my AP Physics class so I’m looking at the responses today. Here are the basic questions I asked them:
  1. What features of this last unit helped you learn best before the final assessment and should not be changed? (Praise in order to know what is working)
  2. What features of this last unit didn't really help you understand the material? (a chance to see what isn’t working right now and could stand to be changed or a piece that is not working for everyone. Challenge practices that aren’t working)
  3. How do you feel about the assessment options and the ability for you to show your understanding? (Students were given options for summative assessment of traditional AP format test consisting of multiple choice & Free Response Questions a.k.a FRQ or create a mastery defense presentation as video, screencast, or face to face presentation)
  4. What would help your learning even more as we enter the next unit? (A chance for learners to suggest new ideas and challenge what is not being done)
  5. Would you ever feel comfortable proposing you own idea for an assessment option? (I want to push learners to the point where if they are not taking the AP test in May, they would feel comfortable proposing their own way to demonstrate that they have mastered the unit outcomes via creation)

This survey could easily have been done using a Google Form, but I use Pear Deck to present notes during large group instruction. I give students the first few minutes of class to answer the questions.  I then exported the responses to a spreadsheet.




It’s one thing to collect feedback, but the purpose of feedback is for action. So what will I do with this feedback?  First,  focus on some of the pieces of feedback that I saw frequently.
The things that are working?
  • Notes/Pear Deck 
    • Practice Problems
    • Hands-on learning
  • What things aren’t working?
    • More detail in answer keys 
    • FRQ practice 
  • Can we try this?
    • More practice problems & FRQ’s
    • More labs
    • Going over practice problems

So what actions will I take to this feedback?
Answer Keys Detail
I’ve decided to push the answer key creation from myself to my students. It’s been an idea I’ve had for a couple of months, but needed to be pushed to try it. I’m going to use Flipgrid as a location for students to post explanations of all the problems from a problem set. Student groups will be assigned 1 to 2 problems to explain via a video posted to Flipgrid during class time.  This will ensure that all students will have access to more through explanations than my current keys and they will be student generated. This way students will not need to sit while solutions to problems they already understood were explained to the whole class. They can simply view the ones they were having difficulty with. I hope to have students who are taking the unit test do the same thing with the Free Response Question practice. I hope to share out how this goes in a future post.
More practice problems and FRQ’s
In the age of digital resources, finding more practice problems should not be an issue. Giving students access to them and informing them about where to find them is the challenge. For my class, one of the resources is an open source textbook.  Providing a direct link to the practice problems at the end of a chapter could be a fix for those specifically looking for more practice work and different forms of questioning. Posing links to those questions in our LMS and not making them required would be a good solution.  I just have to put in the effort to build that out. My current unit pages contain supplemental reading, assigned practice problems, supplemental simulations, and video resources.  
It would be fairly simple to post links to additional practice problems right in here.

More challenging problems
As a part of my note sessions, I think it might make sense to start with a quick review of the previous lessons content with a very challenging problem.  Not mathematically, but conceptually. That way it is something we can discuss as a class before moving on to the new content.

More Labs
There seems to be a desire for more hands-on activities. This is one area where the resources are out there.  I just need to feel that push from my learners to bring more of this into our classroom.

More going over problems
We’ll see how students feel about this once we’ve started the Flipgrid answer keys.

My students have provided me with the greatest push to iterate my practice. I trust their feedback to me. They don’t try to get out of learning or suggest unreasonable requests. It’s all actionable feedback. In some cases, it could be more specific. That is something we’ll hope to build on. I used to see a lot of vague feedback from students, blanks, or IDK. But as I’ve acted on feedback the responses have gotten better. When learners see that you act on feedback, you’ll see that the feedback you get is more honest in its challenges and elaboration.

So when are you going to be ready to be challenged? And who is going to challenge you?

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