More labs and more ...

At the end of the first quarter, I had a discussion with my students about their perception of 'how things were going' in the hybrid organic class".  Their reactions and some of the adjustments for the class are:

1.    They commented that they were learning from the video, could do the problems associated with the lesson but they were unsure as to the 'when and why' associate with applying the information in the lessons.  So we are now having pre- and post assignments for the topics.  FYI: The pre-assignments are a new addition in the class format.  I am hoping it will give the students a better understanding of how they would integrate the information or skill set into what they have already learned and understand the implications of the information.

2.    They also wanted more review material integrated into the homework.  Easy enough to solve, I am now developing assignments which are more like an emerging final exam for them to work on.

3.    Whenever I have gone to the library to check on what is going on, I observe that they are using the Khan site in a collaborative setting, they discuss what is going on, they work together on the associated hand-out information but they were not checking to ensure that everyone was ‘on-board’ before they moved on to another topic and these students are not aggressive enough with their peers to get them to go over the material once again.  This has resulted in several students not really mastering the concept which is problematic.  I am not really sure what exactly to do about this since there are the issues of peer pressure and self-image – simply put, the students do not want to appear less bright in front of their classmates. Unfortunately, Adam’s suggestion would not work well in this class since we need to do experiments in our together time.  This leads into the last point of lab time.

4.    The students want to do more labs; in fact they want to do experiments whenever the class formally meets with me.  Unfortunately, I had to tell them that this is not possible since I need to make sure they know what they are doing before they can do it.  I would suggest that this strong desire to engage in hands on experiences is one of the major differences between students in high school and students in college.  College students want to do the work theoretically since it is less time consuming while high school students want to do labs – this is the part of the learning that they most enjoy, remember and WANT to do.  I am making a concerted effort this quarter to try and do more lab work with them and I am developing shorter versions of the experiments to fit more of them into the schedule to meet the students request for this experience.