Library time = Free time?

Lately, I've been more skeptical of the effectiveness of having all students work in a blended environment. Among the other things that I've been concerned with is that many students treat their library time as "study hall" for whatever work they need to get done from various classes. This would be fine if they could manage their time effectively and spend enough time doing their physics on their own time. Some students can do this, and have demonstrated an impressive level of discipline. However many students have demonstrated they don't yet have this level of discipline. That doesn't mean blended learning isn't a nice option for some students, but trying to force all students to do this seems fraught with peril.

I could of course constantly walk around the library and make sure students are working the whole time, but that somewhat defeats the purpose of a blended class.

Perhaps our students just aren't used to it, and need to get used to working in a blended learning environment. Maybe if they had dealt with this type of learning more they would perform better. Regardless, the traditional way of learning is so ingrained for some of our students that trying to make blended learning work for them feels as productive as trying to hold back the tides.

Self paced mastery learning is great and it's also a disaster

I've been using a variation of mastery learning in both my blended course and regular courses, where students don't move on from a topic until they mastered it. They would watch videos on a topic, and then progress at their own pace through lab activities, conceptual questions, and problem sets.

It was great because it allowed me the time during class to interview students during each step of their progression to identify any misconceptions. And it prevented students from moving on until they proved that they really understood.

It was a disaster because at least half of the students were unable to work at a decent pace and budget time accordingly without putting everything off until the last possible moment. Even when I gave zeros in the gradebook if they didn't complete something that day, many students still could not manage to move at a steady pace.

I really wish it would have worked. The personal interviewing component at every step was so powerful it is hard to abandon it. But people seem to need a hard deadline at a particular point in time for each assignment in order to muster the motivation to get anything done. This sounds obvious to me now. I guess I was blinded by all the potential benefits that self pacing can provide (mastery learning, more one on one time with students, etc.)

So, I am also going back to using a more traditional non-self paced, non-mastery based class with hard deadlines. We will all move together through the material at the same speed. Some students will have to move on before they are ready, but we should be able to move at a respectable pace now. Plus the students are actually welcoming the change. They know that most of them need a rigid deadline for each assignment or they won't get it done.

Going Old School

Recently in Intro to Economics, I've reverted to teaching, as the kids would say, "old school."  Based on student feedback and performance, they've displayed an aptitude for succeeding in a traditional classroom environment.  With this particular group of students, collaborative learning is a key to their success, and for them, that means having the opportunity to ask questions, engage in discussion, as well as have specific problems with each piece of new content.

To facilitate learning over the past several weeks, I've taught with a traditional textbook, assigned readings, and supplemented those readings with practice problems for each chapter.  Students both succeeded with this method (they scored well on quizzes) as well as seemed more comfortable.

I attempted to supplement their readings with videos from Khan Academy, but students expressed the concepts to be too abstract to understand without having the opportunity to discuss the answers with either myself or their classmates.  As this student group consists of mostly sophomores and juniors, they may just be exhibiting a developmental preference for hands on, concrete examples of complex ideas.  While the Khan videos are rich in theoretical content, they are difficult for students to grasp if such a student has difficulty with abstract thinking.

What I've noticed that students REALLY need above and beyond anything else is practice.  Based on the last unit, a traditional method of teaching was more readily able to achieve that objective.  However, in my next unit, I'm going to have students use digital resources to prepare a collaborative project and teach a lesson to the class.  I will post my next update with this unit is completed.