Kelly Morgan - Science Education

Why homework doesn't work...

2011-03-09T13:01:00.000-06:00

Homework doesn't work because...

1. Unlike what most of us were told as kids, practice DOES NOT make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Practice makes permanent.

How unbelievably frustrating is it to you and a student when they go home and diligently complete their assignment of practice problems for math or science and come back to realize they've had a systematic error and practiced that error 15-30 times? It can be almost impossible to get that error out of them after all that reinforcement with the error.

2. Timely, specific and tailored feedback is one of the most crucial aspects of efficient and effective learning and the traditional system of homework doesn't provide that.

Let's say you assign work on a Monday and the kid does it, and turns it in on Wednesday (because you're on a block schedule and only see students every-other-day) and you look at it and return it to them on Friday. That's now 5 days later. Chances are the student will look at the grade and toss it or file it in their binder. They've forgotten what was in their mind when they were working on the problems and therefore the feedback is not timely.

And chances are, with the grading you have to do you don't have time for detailed, step-by-step feedback. Your response might be a simple point deduction, a word or two, etc., but you're not likely to go through every missed problem on every student's paper and write feedback that the student would then be able to correct their misunderstandings with (especially in light of #1 above!) Therefore the feedback isn't specific or tailored.

3. Students get stuck and can't move on and therefore often don't do the homework.

With math and math-based sciences, an assignment typically starts out with simpler or single-step practice and works its way up to the more complex and multi-step tasks. If a student can't do the first one, they look at the next one and probably can't do it either, look at the one after and they really can't do that one. So they put it away and are stuck.

4. If they do have a question, by the time they see you next they don't remember what it was.

So let's say the student gets stuck, puts it in his backpack with the intention of going in to get help the next day. But by then they probably have forgotten what their original question was - again, not timely feedback!

So, what can you do instead?

Although I'm by no means a proponent of drill-and-kill, there are skills that students need to practice in math and many science courses. But there are much better ways of doing it...

One method is backwards-faded worksheets for students that cannot solve the traditional problems on their own. Read a blog I wrote describing them as a form of scaffolding.

A second method is to simply build in class time for work sessions. During those work sessions, make sure that students have access to peers, you, and the answer key.

Give them the answer key? What????
I keep mine on the front table in my classroom so that they always know where it is and can access it but I can keep track of who and how long they're spending looking at it. I encourage students to look at it if they're unsure of how they did on a problem, after the first few whether they think they did it right or not (just to make sure they're not practicing, and therefore making permanent, wrong methods).

If they look at the answer key, got it wrong and can't figure out why then they ask me or a peer and get that immediate, tailored feedback...bingo!

Another method is using a flipped-classroom where students use technology to access lectures outside of class and then use class time to work on problems together - this is an extreme version of the "build in class time for work sessions" suggested above...it's a good one! :)

How to allow all students to move on when they're ready?

2011-02-18T10:34:00.000-06:00

Although this post is most definitely related to many on my blog (about mastery learning, etc.), it comes from a more personal interest.

I taught HS for 10 years, but I'm also a parent.

My son is in 2nd grade and his last assessment tests showed his math ability about two years ahead of where he's expected to be at his age.

He's still young...his motivation to do work that is below his ability level is still the excitement of being in school, wanting to please a teacher, etc.

But soon he'll start the path to becoming a little more jaded at the school experience that virtually all kids go through as they become teenagers (goodness knows, it's one thing to teach them everyday like I have but the thought of being a parent of one is a whole other issue!)

Keeping unchallenged students motivated
What will keep him motivated to do the work then? If he's capable of work 2 grade levels above where he is, certainly not the challenge of the work itself.

I wrote a blog post on motivating students to use their creativity and abilities for classroom like they do for their outside interests.

Challenging work does provide intrinsic interest...people like to work autonomously on work that is interesting and challenging (not to the point of impossible or frustrating, but challenging IS interesting).

Eventually my son will stop being interested in his work because it will be too easy and he won't care so much about the "fun" of school. I know...my brother did it for years, barely graduated from high school and dropped out of college courses at least 3 times despite his genius-level IQ and obvious ability and creativity.

"More work" or "Different curriculum" not the answer
What can I do to help my 2nd grade son be more challenged?

And I don't just want more work of the same level to fill his time in the classroom (he definitely finishes early every time). The point is not to give him more to do of the same...the point is to let him advance as he's ready.

And to not require him to repeat content as review from previous years (which I understand is necessary for many students) if HE doesn't need it.

But it's not the curriculum that's the problem, necessarily. I look at what he brings home and the curriculum and methods themselves seem sound and fine. So it's not that they need to adopt new curriculum...they need to let a student progress through it at their own speed.

Barriers to allowing students to progress at different rates
The district isn't set up to allow him to advance. They aren't set up to allow progression in single subjects at different rates (only allowing students to skip entire grades which I don't want for a variety of reasons)

One of the problems is: if he works ahead this year, then what will he do next year? People are afraid of letting students work ahead because the next teacher, class, year, level will then have to push them even farther or make them repeat what they've already done.

People are afraid of letting kids work at difference paces because then they'll have to keep track of, assess, plan for and implement many different levels of lessons at a single time instead of one single classroom lesson.

But all this fear is leading to students being unchallenged, held back and eventually turned off to learning in a formal setting.

The need/application of technology
There are many discussions online and among educators about the use of technology in the classroom...THIS is an excellent place for technology - providing flexible, dynamic math instruction that progresses with the student and backs up or gives more support if they start missing questions but allows them to pass through if they're solving problems correctly.

Technology is out there - adaptive assessment gives a student a more challenging question if they're getting questions right and then easier questions if they're getting them wrong. It's a much more accurate way to assess where a students' skills are at that point.

We just need to apply this technology in a way that allows students to learn content rather than just assess where they are.

We can follow the model for reading that's already in place
They are doing this with reading - students are put into reading groups with work appropriate to their level. The reading groups are flexible and are frequently changed and shifted as students grow at different rates.

Why can't they do this with all subjects?

I taught high school chemistry class this way for my last two years in the classroom...it was harder work for me but student-centered and completely worth it! If I can do it with high school students in a course like chemistry, why are we not doing it with elementary school math?

How do we decide if/which technology is appropriate?

2011-02-17T10:53:00.001-06:00

There's been much discussion lately on twitter concerning technology in education (e-books, ensuring equitable access to technology, etc.) and it got me thinking.

I added my own comment to the #edchat ("We need to be sure to fit the technology to the content and not the content to the technology") and wrote a blog about e-books from my perspective as a textbook author.

But the discussion got me thinking. What kinds of questions would we ask ourselves to determine if and when a technology is appropriate for a given situation?

I'm definitely not a proponent of using technology for technology's sake. Using something just to say we're using something isn't the point at all.

It's true that our students will be surrounded by technological tools in the future and we want them to be comfortable with using them, learning to use new ones, and thinking of new and different applications and technologies.

But to do this, it's important that we teach them how to decide which tool is appropriate or most effective for a given task. And to do that, we need to model it and explicitly explain our reasoning for selecting a given technology for a task.

I have an idea of a list of questions I ask when I decide to use (or develop) a technological tool for a task, but I certainly don't have all the answers, so please take a moment to add any questions or criteria you feel is lacking in the comments below or through Twitter and I'll post them here!

My list of questions to ask before using a technology:

What are the educational goals/outcomes of this task?
Does the technology allow me to do things that I simply could not do without it that will help me meet the educational goals/outcomes?
Does the technology make aspects of the task more simple, transparent or automated that allow the students to focus on the heart of the task rather than get caught up in less important details?
Is the educational task made easier, more effective or more efficient by the use of the technology or does the use of the technology just "clutter up" the task for the students?
Is the technology user-friendly or intuitive enough to fade to the background and allow students to focus on the task rather than the technology?
Do I have reliable, easy access to the technology for individuals or groups of a size that is appropriate for the task?
Am I familiar enough with the technology to be able to quickly troubleshoot and help students not get stuck on the technology itself?
Are the educational goals/outcomes going to meet better or more efficiently if I use this technology?
Does it make sense to use it with your content, class structure, etc.?

Here's some elaborations/examples on each of the questions...

1. What are the educational goals/outcomes of the task?

Is the goal to learn the technology itself? If so, then the other questions may or may not apply. It is appropriate to sometimes learn a technology before then applying it to an educational goal related to your specific content.

It's important to not try to learn too many things at once - students quickly reach cognitive overload when trying to learn a new technology at the same time as trying to learn content! So if you need to do both, you need to have one activity that is simply about learning the technology (using content they already know and are comfortable with) and then have a separate activity where students use the technology for some content-related goal.

However, if the goals are content-related then it's important to know what the educational goals are before attempting to answer the remaining questions.

2. Does the technology allow me to do things that I simply could not do without it?

I teach science and there are simulation applications out there that allow me to do things I can't otherwise do - have a frictionless system, watch an experiment proceed at a higher rate so that a 10 hour experiment is modeled in 10 minutes, view processes at a molecular level, etc.

But remember that it's not just about doing something because you can. Is it educationally appropriate for the task and the level of student to be doing frictionless experiments? Depending on my educational goals, it might or might not be.

Another example of this is using PowerPoint presentations with a projector. If I'm just using it for text and simple diagrams or figures, I might as well save the money on the projector light-bulb use and use my whiteboard. However, if I'm moving electrons from one atom to another to show bonding in a molecule, that's something I can't do on a whiteboard and it justifies the use of the technology.

3. Does the technology make aspects of the task more simple, transparent or automated that allow the students to focus on the heart of the task rather than get caught up in less important details?

I've studied cognitive load theory a lot and one of the ways to reduce cognitive load of students to allow them to learn more from a task is to make steps or sub-tasks that are the main focus of the learning automated or transparent.

For example, if the educational goal of a task is to teach how to graph, then you should not automate the graphing process but if the process of creating the graph itself is not the main educational goals, using technology that automates that process and then allows students to use cognitive resources for other aspects of the tasks is a wise use of technology.

4. Is the educational task made easier, more effective or more efficient by the use of the technology or does the use of the technology just "clutter up" the task for the students?

If students have to focus too much on the technology - if it's clunky, difficult, not really built for the task you're using it for, has excessive amounts of "set-up" before students can get right to the educational goals then it will not help achieve those educational goals.

Having a technology that you can "pre-set" or "pre-load" with settings is highly advantageous to allow you to get right to the point. (Unless of course the educational goal is to learn how to set-up a particular type of technology...but then you're back to question 1 where I said if that's your educational goal then many of these other questions do not apply!)

5. Is the technology user-friendly or intuitive enough to fade to the background and allow students to focus on the task rather than the technology?

The best use of technology for educational purposes is when the technology itself fades into the background and allows students to focus on the task it enables rather than focus on the technology itself.

6. Do I have reliable, easy access to the technology for individuals or groups of a size that is appropriate for the task?

It may be the best thing in the world but if you don't have enough computers or enough time to rotate students through stations and are forced to have 4-6 students at a computer, it may not be beneficial to a large portion of those students.

7. Am I familiar enough with the technology to be able to quickly troubleshoot and help students not get stuck on the technology itself?

I know we all have limited time to prepare activities and learn new technologies - but if you're not familiar enough to troubleshoot the inevitable problems that students are going to have using a technology then it's better to wait and implement it when you can do so.

8. Are the educational goals/outcomes going to meet better or more efficiently if I use this technology?

There are some things that I COULD do with technology but the educational goals are met just as well without the technology and it's actually faster to do it without the technology.

Time is probably the most valuable commodity to a teacher. If the educational goals can be met equally well both with and without the technology, then time is a deciding factor--will the technology make the task take longer (getting it all out, setting it all up, getting kids logged in, troubleshooting, etc.) or will it save you time (will the tasks that it can automate or you having pre-done settings make things go quicker than doing it without technology)?

If educational goals are met equally both with and without it, then using technology simply to make things go faster is just fine as a reason to use it!

But using technology to make things go faster at the expense of focusing on the educational goals (for reasons discussed above such as the technology getting in the way of the content) then saving time is not a valid reason for choosing it!

9. Does it make sense to use it with your content, class structure, etc.?

This is one of the most important and perhaps most overlooked whenever someone is recommending a new technology as a wonder-tool in the classroom. Maybe it just doesn't work for how your class is structured.

I have read about and know of teachers that use communication tools such as discussion boards and wikis wonderfully in their classroom--paying attention to all the things pointed out above.

However, as much as the appeal of using technology to communicate with peers appeals to me, it just doesn't fit into my classroom. Students don't do work outside of class unless they fall behind (which is a topic for a completely different blog post) so the only time they'd be using the wiki or discussion board would be while they were physically in my classroom. And what's the point of using computers to post on a discussion blog when you're sitting in the same room as the people you're discussing with?

I know that you can do it across class periods, or there are other ways to make the conversation be with people outside of those sitting in the same room, but for me, my content, my educational goals and my classroom it just doesn't make sense to do it.

Please add any of your "questions to ask before using technology" in the comments or through twitter and I'll post them here!

A textbook author's views on e-textbooks

2011-02-16T09:53:00.001-06:00

I wasn't able to participate in the lively Twitter #edchat discussion on e-textbooks last night due to timing issues, but I did see some of the comments after it was over and thought I'd share my 2-cents, for what it's worth.

I have a unique perspective among high school teachers - I'm actually the author of a high school chemistry textbook (or see the publisher's website for it) as well as a teacher, so hopefully this can add to the discussion from last night.

My Love of e-Readers
I also was an obsessed owner of the first edition of Amazon Kindle e-reader and just received the third generation this past Christmas (and am now obsessed with it). I rarely go anywhere without the Kindle and I LOVE reading on it non-stop.

I have a smart phone and a laptop and I've played with tablets and they all are wonderfully useful for various purposes, but when I'm going to sit down and READ a large-ish quantity of information, I find the e-readers more comfortable.

And because it's not a backlit screen I can read for 8 hours while traveling and in airports (not to mention can read it in broad daylight at the pool in the summer...try that with a back-lit screen!) and my eyes don't hurt. I can read 3 novels around 600 pages each before the battery needs to be charged.

For the purpose of reading text, it's AMAZING!

Using an e-reader for more than just a convenient book!

It's not just about being able to carry large novels in a small device, or having flexibility to carry many such novels in one device. I actually purchased my first e-reader for professional reasons.

I was in the middle of my PhD program and I purchased the e-reader before I had to do my comprehensive exams (six massive essays/papers) and before I wrote the proposal for my dissertation research topic and then the dissertation itself.

Even when not in a formal educational capacity, I read science education literature profusely. But I don't like reading on a computer screen (like I said before - not as comfortable, convenient, back-lit, etc.) and I didn't want to print out the literally hundreds of research articles (including figures and diagrams) I was going to read during that last half of my PhD work.

So I put them all on my e-reader and was able to comment, highlight, search, etc. (not to mention carry them around with me and save tons of paper).

When I was ready, I simply hooked my e-reader up to my computer and downloaded a single file that had all the highlights and annotations I'd made, along with the citation for each article that the highlight or annotation was in.

I printed out that document with all the notes and quotations, literally cut it into strips for each quotation or annotation and sorted it out.

That took the place of "notecards" of the "old-school" research-paper writing experience.

And if at any point I couldn't remember what article I'd previously read that mentioned a similar topic, I could do a word search and the e-reader would show me all the articles with that word.

And I carried all of these hundreds of articles around with me on a small device with an amazing battery life.

Do e-readers have a place in education - absolutely!!!!!

Beyond e-readers

I can see many texts being converted directly to e-reader format. Literature, history, business, etc. You can have links in an e-reader and they're all built with basic web-browser functionality, so students can click a link within an e-book on an e-reader and go to more information on the internet.

However, I teach chemistry and there's so much in that course that I'd rather move beyond the e-reader capabilities.

The power of worked examples is amazing (see a blog I wrote last week about it) and I have worked examples throughout my textbook. But when students go to the online version, they can watch the example worked out step-by-step rather than seeing the completed on, static, in a written book. They can pause, go back to a previous step, etc.

I also have animated diagrams and figures - they can watch the molecules as they undergo various changes and see it animated rather than static.

They can complete practice questions and get instant feedback on how they did.

In the near future I want to continue to develop the simulations that accompany the content and put those with the online text so students can experience simulations when reading.

There's so much that I can do with an online book as compared to an e-reader that I feel that mine (and likely all math and science books) is better suited for online rather than e-reader.

Where I'd like to see my textbook go
My textbook is available through Kendall Hunt in e-format if you adopt the hardback version for your students. And it's come a long way - it started out as a PDF format with links to the worked examples or animations and it's now becoming a more interactive environment as the publisher releases it's new online technology.

But I've talked to teachers in schools that are going completely paperless and are not allowed to adopt physical textbooks any longer.

I've talked to teachers that desperately want to use my textbook with their students but they don't have the funds to adopt a new book (even though some of them haven't adopted in 7-10 years) and they don't know when they'll be able to switch.

I know that there's a market for e-book only and I believe that's where the publishers will be headed (if they aren't already).

So as a teacher and a textbook author...

I see the benefit of using e-books - budget, flexibility, size/weight, access anywhere, ability to update/change, dynamic abilities.

And I want e-books in the classrooms.

But I want them to be done with a purpose and not just slapped out there by a publisher because they need to get "something" online.

And I want it to use the best technology for that purpose. Like I said - most of my science education research is perfectly suited to my e-reader. It's not fancy, but it does it's job very well, I think better than the fancier computers and tablets - read text, highlight, comments, search and then export those annotations. But my science - especially my own chemistry textbook - needs a more dynamic environment.

So does that mean students need an e-reader and a laptop/tablet along with their phones.
I think so. But that's still a much lighter weight backpack (and ultimately cheaper) than carrying around all those books year after year.

I have young kids of my own (kindergarten and second grade) and I really hope that by the time they get to high school they will not be carrying static, heavy textbooks home with them...but I hope that what they do have is the technology fit to the content rather than content fit to a particular technology!

Do you really remember what it was like to not know your subject-area?

2011-02-15T09:21:00.002-06:00

Is it even possible to step back and see your class through the eyes of someone that knows nothing about what you're teaching? The longer you teach, or have experience with your subject, the farther you move away from this novice viewpoint. Keep reading to see why it's important to do that and what happened when I did it.

I spent some time yesterday helping my daughter's kindergarten teacher get onto facebook. Last Friday I helped her create a classroom webpage. She's very "technology-phobic" and really wants to start using it but just doesn't know where to begin.

While helping her learn facebook I was once again reminded of something I try to keep in mind often while teaching, planning a class, writing, etc. That I have used facebook so often and so long that I truly forgot what it was like not to know how to navigate within the site, what the difference was between a "wall post" and a "status" and who can see what, etc.

I first realized this when I was teaching chemistry after about 5 years. My students liked me and enjoyed being in my class...but they did not feel the same way about the subject. I was constantly being asked "when am I ever going to need this?"

As I learned more about cognition I realized that students were not asking that question, not usually anyway, to be flippant teenagers. Our brains need a reason to learn something. So what kinds of reasons did I give them? "You'll need it for stoichiometry", "You'll need it for the next chapter", "If you ever take another chemisty class you'll learn about." Obviously these were not the answers that their brains were looking for.

My lightbulb moment was when I realized that the order I taught my subject in made perfect sense to me - I know the whole story. I know where we'll end up and I know the smaller skills or concepts that they'll need to progress from beginning to end. I was teaching each skill or concept in the best ways that I could - but I wasn't able to show them why they needed each of those skills or concepts because they just didn't know the whole story like I did.

But I was teaching in a very established sequence...how could something so established not be the best way? There's a few different schools of thought on sequence in chemistry - some start with atomic theory and others leave it until later - but there are a couple of well established sequences that people (and therefore almost all textbooks) follow and I was following one of them.

I felt like if I shook up the order that I wouldn't be doing it "right." But guess what...the students don't know what the "right" order is and they'll NEVER know if you go in a different order! They don't know what concepts are customarily grouped together into a chapter. They don't know what order the chapters should go in.

The real reason that I was struggling to show my students the relevance of my course was that I had forgotten what it was like to not know the whole picture.

So I stepped back and looked at all my concepts and skills and began rearranging them. I put them in groups based on a problem, project or product to study. It wasn't easy. It's a massive jigsaw puzzle. I had to make sure that some concepts came before others, as obviously they need the foundations first. But I managed to completely reorganize the course, keeping prerequisite concepts before those that use them, and have each chapter teach only the skills and concepts to understand things such as antacids, airbags, glow in the dark, soap, sports drinks, etc.

I used it with my students and began telling other teachers about the amazing results in my classroom (including students using my text being more interested in chemistry at the end of the year and students with the same teachers using a traditional text being less interested in chemistry by the end of the year!). Soon other teachers wanted to use it and it eventually became a published textbook (Discovering Chemistry You Need to Know published by Kendall Hunt).

The point of this blog post wasn't to point you towards my textbook's website (although you're more than welcome to check it out if you so choose). The point was to ask you, fellow teachers, what would you change about your courses if you stepped back and truly was able to see the class through the eyes of someone that really doesn't know anything about what you're teaching?

When I present seminars or workshops about my textbook at pre-adoption meetings or teaching conferences, I'm met with a few teachers that are resistant. There's a variety of reasons for this, but one of them is that it's the "wrong" order. They often begin immediately looking for specific concepts throughout the book and deciding to jump from chapter to chapter throughout the book to turn it into the same sequence that I worked so hard to get it out of. They just can't break that sequence. It is absolutely amazing to me the work someone will go through to re-order a thematic book back into a traditional book when they're faced with it as what they have to teach out of. But they do it.

If they could just look at the two options through the eyes of a student - someone that knows nothing about the way it's "supposed to be taught" I think they'd have a much different view!

So whether you're teaching a friend to use a technology new to them that you use so easily and familiarly that you can't even imagine not knowing how to use it, or whether you're planning the sequence and instruction of your course...try to remember what it's like to not know anything about where you're headed!

How can we get students to use their powers for good rather than evil?

2011-02-11T14:42:00.000-06:00

OK, so not "evil" but how can we get them to use the ingenuity, dedication, critical thinking, creativity and honest hard work that they apply to their everyday interests to school?

I just watched an animation of a talk on motivation. The talk is speaking specifically about motivation in the workplace and the pretty counter-intuitive finding that increased monetary reward does not produce better work (and in fact in some cases produces poorer performance). But it's most definitely applicable to classrooms as well...where our "monetary rewards" are the grades students receive.

So why do students, who are clearly creative, capable of focused work and motivated in everyday tasks seem incapable of such performance in school? The same reason that people will spend hours and hours of their free-time working harder than they do at their paying jobs to create something or work on something (such as the Linux, Apache and Wikipedia examples described in the video) when they're not getting anything tangible out of it.

(I really suggest watching the 11 min video as it's really good...but here's my "take-away version for the educator" below)

People are motivated by three things: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Let's look at a traditional classroom first.

Autonomy - not usually. Usually they are told what to study, how to study it and how to show what they know.

Mastery - not usually. Usually they are given a specific amount of time to work on learning something and then the test is given and then the class moves on. Students are not given the time and support to work towards mastery.

Purpose - not usually. Usually the purpose for studying a topic, in the eyes of the student, includes things such as "for a grade," "because I'll next in the next chapter, year or class," "because we have to," "because they make us," and various versions of these.

Let's look at a different type of classroom.

I combine many teaching methods and techniques into my classroom, but two of them serve as the centerpieces. One is mastery learning. The other is thematic learning.

I'm by no means saying that my classroom is perfect and by no means is every single one of my students motivated all the time. Everyone in education knows there are no silver bullets. And that's where all the little things that I combine come in - you have to use specific teaching methods to reach specific students, to address certain concepts or misconceptions, or just to keep things fresh for you and your students. But these two major components of my classroom allow me to increase student motivation and performance in a way that is truly astounding.

Autonomy. Absolutely! In my mastery learning chemistry classroom, students choose how they're going to learn a concept and they often choose how they are going to demonstrate understanding in final chapter projects.

Mastery. Absolutely! That's the whole point of a mastery learning course - they work on a concept until they can show mastery and then, and only then, are they moved on. Students truly respond differently when they know that they are given the time and support needed to master a concept versus a teacher or class moving on at a given point in time whether they've learned it or not. Lower level students have a completely different attitude in a mastery learning environment. And the mastery of topics early in the course, combined with the increased self-confidence and self-efficacy mean the student moves even faster through material as the course progresses and those that started out slower often catch up.

Purpose. Absolutely! I teach in a completely thematic manner in which students learn the concepts they need to know in order to understand a specific theme or problem. There are lots of names for this type of learning (problem-based learning, project-based learning, thematic learning, etc.) But what it is not is applied learning - applied learning means you learn the material first and then apply it to a concept, problem or purpose. Instead, PBL or thematic learning uses the problem/project/theme to introduce the concepts themselves. The problem/project/theme are interwoven and included before, during and after concept introduction and set the entire purpose for learning. My students still do the exact same chemistry concepts they've always done...however they do them on a completely need-to-know basis. There is now a direct, tangible, immediate purpose for each concept they learn in the course.

For more Information

Here's some blogs I've written about various aspects of mastery classes.
Here's my Science Mastery Learning website (it's very new, so feel free to add content!)
Here's my newly published book on Mastery Learning in the Science Classroom: Success for Every Student available from NSTA Press.

Here's info on the thematic high school chemistry textbook I wrote, Discovering Chemistry You Need to Know available from Kendall Hunt Publishing.

Teaching with Worked Examples - Save learner time and effort while increasing performance!

2011-02-10T11:54:00.002-06:00

I've done a lot of study in cognitive theory, specifically cognitive load theory, during my graduate work. One of the best take-home lessons I learned (and immediately implemented in my classroom with great success) was how and when to use worked examples.

I taught chemistry, and even though I tried really hard to make sure I had a conceptually-focused course, there's still many, many skills students needed to learn and practice (writing and naming chemical formulas, balancing equations, various mathematical calculations, etc.)

What is a worked example?

A worked example is exactly what it sounds like - an example problem that is worked out step-by-step. They work well in areas with well-defined tasks and problems (math such as algebra, geometry or statistics, computer programming, science tasks such as naming or writing chemical formulas).

What evidence is there that they are beneficial?

I'm a scientist and I love research...what evidence is there that I should employ this method before I take the time and energy to do so? There's LOTS of studies and evidence on the benefit of worked examples.

Here's a study that I find pretty compelling (Paas, 1992)...

One group had 12 conventional geometry problems and another group had the same problems but 8 of them were "worked example" and 4 of them were problems to solve.

Students in the worked-example group: (1) spent significantly less time working on the learning activity, (2) scored higher on a test with similar types of problems ("near transfer problems") and (3) scored higher on tests of problems that require application of the content in a different way ("far transfer problems")

Zhu and Simon (1987) showed students could go through a three-year math sequence in two years using the study of worked examples.

When to use worked examples

When the task is well-defined.

When it's a skill to practice.

When the learner is new to the task/problem. The expertise-reversal effect shows, believe it or not, that what works for novices to make learning efficient actually hinders more advanced learners. Being required to study examples of a problem type that the learner already knows how to solve actually makes their learning less efficient. (All the more evidence for mastery learning courses and dynamic computerized tools that adjust to the learner's ability level to provide individualized instruction!)

How to use worked examples

Trafton and Reiser (1993) found that it's better to show a worked example (or set of them of the same type of problem) and then have students practice that type of problem and repeat this for each type of problem rather than show all the worked examples of various problem-types first, followed by all the practice problems (which unfortunately is how most books are set up...even within a section or lesson, they still show all the examples first and then show all the practice rather than grouping like problems, both examples and practice, together).

How to get STUDENTS to use worked examples

In order to see the effects (faster learning, better performance) of worked examples, the students must use them instead of just skipping over them and jumping into the problems they have to solve (like most of my students would do).

Teaching students to self-explain as they study a worked example is one way. As they go through a worked example, ask themselves questions like "where did that number come from?" or "why did they do that step next?"

One way to get students to self-explain, or to teach them how to, is by using faded worksheets. This is where you show a fully worked out example. Then the next problem is worked out except for the last step. The next problem is worked out except for the last two steps. You can "fade" one or more steps at a time (depending on the difficulty of the steps you're fading or the level of your students) from the END of the problems as students go down the page. When they have to fill in those missing steps and they don't know how, they'll refer to the worked out problems above and ask themselves those questions of "where did that step come from."

If you change types of problems or make it harder, you may need to put some of the completed steps back in (see my example here...when I go to 2-step dimensional analysis, I fill back in steps for them temporarily to support this jump in difficulty).

An example from my classroom
Here's an example of my old worksheet on dimensional analysis (a standard thing in any chemistry or physics courses). This worksheet usually took quite a bit of time for students to do, lots of frustration, lots of irritation and general bad feelings about chemistry at that point. They would take a quiz after completing it and still not do very well. I hated this lesson!

Then I switched the same worksheet to a backwards-faded worksheet and the students would complete the worksheet and pass the quiz all within one 90 minute class period (and I required all students to pass with an 80% or better before moving on). So to go from a multi-day, torturous process to a 90-min we all pass process is a miracle in my mind!

Why are they beneficial?
If you're interested in why they have this enormous benefit on learning, like I always am, you can read up on the information on cognitive load theory and see that basically worked examples produce a much lower cognitive load that free problem solving and this lower cognitive load allows room for germane load (learning).

Retrieving information just as beneficial as elaborately encoding it!

2011-02-09T15:34:00.001-06:00

It's commonly thought that how information is encoded in our mind is the key to "learning it" and that retrieval of that information is just a way to "show" that we learned it. But a report shows that the act of practicing retrieving information is, in itself, an important (and maybe more important) key to learning the information.

A Sciencexpress report on January 20, 2011 presented this finding that has the potential to have great impact on how we can efficiently and effectively learn material!

How did they do their study?
Karpicke and Blunt from the Dept of Psychological Studies at Purdue University did the study.

There were two parts to the study - the second was an expansion of the first. The results are the same for both, so I'll just describe the larger study.

120 undergraduate students studied two passages of science material. One was texts with enumerated structures (for example a list of the properties of different muscle tissues) and the other was a text describing sequence structures (such as describing the sequence of events in the digestive process).

The students studied one passage by using an elaboration study technique (while being able to view the texts, they created concept maps of the information to more elaborately encode the information) and the other using retrieval practice techniques (recalling as much of the information as they could in a "free recall test" WITHOUT being able to view the text). The learning time was the same for both types of learning activities.

(Note that concept mapping can be considered a retrieval practice technique if it's done WITHOUT access to the learning materials. But in this study it was done WITH access to the learning materials so it is an elaborative study technique for this discussion.)

Half the students studied the enumerated science text with elaborations study technique and half with the retrieval practice and then they used the other learning technique on the other text.

The students were then tested on the material a week later. Half of the students were given short-response tests over the two topics and the other half of the students were asked to create concept maps of the two topics. They were not allowed to view the texts for either test format.

What did they find?
Retrieval practice produced higher scores for BOTH types of science texts on BOTH types of testing format (short-response and concept mapping) a week after the learning period.

So free-recall retrieval practice produces better concepts maps one week later than initially creating a concept map in the presence of the texts. This, to me, is very telling--you'd think that initially creating a concept map of the material would result in better concepts maps a week later, but, nope, it didn't!

And these findings are LARGE. (For those that are familiar with statistics, they have effect sizes of 1 or larger...that means that retrieval practice resulted in scores that were on average one entire standard deviation better than elaborative study...that's really big in education studies!)

Overall, 101 of the 120 students (84%) did better on the tests (either short-response or concept map creation) after they'd used retrieval practice than they did after they used elaborative study techniques.

However, when asked, 75% of the students thought the results would be the other way. The key here...people think that elaborative study is better than retrieval practice when really it's not...so people aren't likely studying in the most effective way possible!

What might be an explanation?
The authors present discussion that "Rather than multiplying or increasing the number of encoded features, which occurs during elaboration," retrieval practice may improve how well a specific piece of information is called up when cued. In other words, the retrieval practice demands the learner to place their own organizational structure on the information as it's recalled which then enables them to more accurately recall the related information when presented with a cue in a different setting...so we're better at picking out the important/applicable piece of information when we need it later on.

Are classrooms fair?

2011-02-08T18:14:00.002-06:00

I taught the way I think most people do for the first 8 years. I created assignments that were aimed at the middle student--practice is important but didn't want overkill or busy work.

But is that fair?

What's "fair"?

Is it every student doing the same assignments? Or is it every student being assigned what they need to learn?

I knew that might higher level students didn't need to balance 20 equations if they could remember (or learn quickly) from physical science or junior high. But how could I give some students less work without causing a huge uproar in the classroom? Surely a room full of teenagers would cry "but that's not fair" if a student didn't need as much practice and another got assigned extra because yet hadn't gotten it yet.

But think about it from the lower student's perspective. Just as it's not fair to require a student to do more practice than is necessary just because other students haven't gotten it yet, surely it's not fair for a struggling student to be given up on as the class moves on before they're ready.

We're not respecting students as individuals on either side of the spectrum.

So I've changed my concept of "fair"--it's no longer "same" but now it's "what each student needs to be successful." That means that when a student can demonstrate understanding then they're done, they don't have to keep balancing equations just because there's that many on the worksheet. If a student finishes the worksheet but they're still struggling then they get more help, more support and more chances to practice and demonstrate.

And what about that teenager uprising I was worried about? Never happened!

Two years of teaching this way with over 250 students and not one single student pulled that dreaded phase out, and neither did any of their teachers. And students (both those that got to stop practicing earlier and those that had extra work assigned) wanted other teachers to adopt the style. They saw that each student was respected as they're own student and they each were provided with the support needed to learn.

People respond wonderfully to respect.

And as for worrying about kids that took longer to get through the course--wasn't really a problem. I found that if I took the time to make sure they got what they needed to learn the early concepts and topics in the course then they were prepared to tackle the later concepts with their bolstered knowledge, skills and confidence--and they often caught up to the middle students, while the middle students ended on time and the uppe level students often ends early and got the chance to design independent research/enrichment projects. Win-win-win!

So what's your conception of "fair"? Are traditional classrooms "fair"? What can we do to change them?

Using Narrated Lectures for Anytime-Anywhere Student Access

2011-02-07T10:21:00.002-06:00

One of the ways that I delivered content to my students in a Mastery Learning class was by narrated lectures. This allows students to have just-in-time content delivery. They get you and your content (both visual and audio) when they are ready for it and where ever they are at that time.

There are so many tools out there to accomplish this goal of providing narrated lectures online, and new tools are being created all the time. You may want to dig around on Google and see which software/tools will work best for you're creation and publication needs as well as your budget, but here are some tips to get you started.

Creating Videos

There's many names for this type of content (vodcasting, vidcasting, podcasting), but publishing a video file in various ways. There's two ways that you can create the video -

1. You can use a videocamera (such as the inexpensive, high quality and easy to use Flip Cams) and record yourself presenting content just as you would to a classroom or record yourself setting up a lab experiment or going over the use or handling of equipment as for a "pre-lab" discussion.

2. You can use software that captures what you do on your computer as you work through a PowerPoint presentation on your computer. A microphone captures your voice and the software records everything that's on the screen. Tablets or other on-screen annotation tools allow for you to write on the screen image of the PowerPoint just as you would write on a whiteboard or smartboard. Some options for these software programs include Camtasia, Snapkast and Profcast. A couple of chemistry teachers out in Colorado have a nice website that explains how they go this route to produce their videos.

The videos are often exported from the camera software or the screen-capturing software as a video file (MP4). These files can be placed on your website, TeacherTube, emailed, placed on flash drive or DVD's, iTunes, uploaded to your content delivery system (such as Moodle or Blackboard). The MP4 files can be viewed on any computer, iPod-type devices, many phones, PSP video game players, etc.

The benefit in this type of video-delivery process is the ease of access - students can view the file on iPods, iPads, their smart phones or video game consoles. Students have enormous flexibility even when you don't have computers for every student in the classroom.

The drawback to this method is that MP4 files can be large depending on the length and quality of the file you created.

Narrated PowerPoint & Webpage
Although similar in basic concept to the above method, it's slightly different and results in much smaller files for viewers to download. This was my method of choice because of the demand downloading large video files during peak hours at the school I was teaching wasn't always the best way (and I couldn't upload large video files to my school's teacher website).

It can also be a cheaper route as you can find conversion options that are free and you can narrate your PowerPoint files within PowerPoint itself so you don't need a screen-capture program but you might or might not have the flexibility of what devices students can view your presentation on, depending on how you choose to convert it.

1. Narrate the lecture within PowerPoint. Depending on your version and operating system, it may be in a different location, but somewhere in your PowerPoint menus, usually near the "view slideshow" option, there will be an option to "record narration." Once you select that option you will see your slideshow and you will click through it just as you would presenting to an audience, speaking into a microphone/headseat as you go. You can use screen annotation with a tablet or other method just as you would during a normal presentation. When you're done with the presentation, it will ask you if you want to save the timing with the narration and say "yes." That way it will remember how long you waited between each click when advancing the slideshow.

Narrated PowerPoint files are VERY LARGE, so you don't want to just put this file on a webpage. You need to convert it somehow.

2. There are many conversion tools out there, some free (usually with a watermark or advertisement on it somewhere) and some will offer teacher pricing if you call or email their customer service which can be considerably cheaper than the regular price.

I used Impatica (with an educator discount I received by calling them) and it imports my narrated PowerPoint file and exports it as a very small webpage. The only catch is that there will be three files you need to place all in the same location on a webpage (all in the same folder)--there's the html file that people view and then there's a .jar file for each html file and then there's an "engine" file that only needs to be put in the folder once no matter how many .html and .jar files are in the folder. As long as they're all stored in the same place, it's no problem and the only file that you need to link or send to the URL for is the html file. Due to this need for placing files in the same folder, it won't work with all content delivery systems (such as WebCT), so use the free trial version to see if it works for your needs before purchasing.

There are other choices that are free and offer more flexibility in deliver options. authorSTREAM, for example, is a website that is free to join and you upload your narrated PowerPoint file and it can convert it to Flash (a small file size) and you can link it to a blog, website, facebook, iTunes or just about anywhere. A free account on this site allows you to upload and publish as many open-access presentations (anyone can search, find them and view them) as you'd like and 20 "private presentations" that only the people you invite to it can see. The paid memberships allow a greater number of "private presentations." Because you can create a link on any webpage to point to your authorSTREAM presentation, this method will work with any content delivery system--the drawback is that unless it's one of your "private presentations" then it will be open to anyone and everyone on the internet (as opposed to the above options where it would be possible to put it in a content delivery system that only students enrolled in your course would have access to).

Top 100 blogs for teachers...yep, I'm blogging about blogs!

2011-02-03T21:11:00.001-06:00

So I'm starting this blog on science education with my goals being to share resources and my thoughts/views on science education.

So here's my first sharing of resources - Top 100 blogs for teachers by teachers. There's sections for elementary, secondary, science education.

As I begin my science education blog, I'll be checking out some of these "best"!

Are we really serious about ALL students learning science?

2011-02-03T14:23:00.004-06:00

If we're really serious about ensuring that all students learn science, then why do we continue the practice of moving on to the next topic before all the students are ready?

Because it's impossible to manage a classroom if you're trying to keep all 20-40 students together and you wait until every last one of them has the concept before moving on. The behavior and attention issues would drive even the most patient teacher up the wall.

So in order to mitigate this problem, most teachers "teach to the middle." The upper kids will already have it down and the lower kids won't have it yet, but when the middle of the group has got it, most teachers move on. (Although sometimes some move on even before this point due to time, packed curriculum, etc.)

In my experience it's not that students CAN'T get something--it's that they don't have the background knowledge (or the prior experiences and understandings) to enable them to learn the new stuff in the same amount of time.

See...I taught chemistry for ten years and it (along with MANY subjects) is one of those things that if you don't understand the stuff in the beginning then you're NEVER going to catch up. If you can't understand chemical formulas then you won't be able to balance an equation, and if you can't do either of those things then forget about getting to stoichiometry. And if you never "got" algebra in such a way that you can transfer it to other content areas then you're going to really struggle with a lot of the math in chemistry.

So once a kid falls behind, the chances of them catching up are slim...they're just trying to float along and not fail at that point.

But I really want my kids to UNDERSTAND what I'm doing in my classroom--if they're just trying to float along and not fail, then what's really the point?

If I could take the time to get kids caught up in the background knowledge, or at least take the time to supplement a student's background knowledge where it specifically prevented them learning the new stuff, then I could teach them the new stuff.

I came to a cross roads after my 8th year teaching where I just couldn't justify teaching in this "teach to the middle" way any longer. It wasn't respectful of the upper level kids (why should they be held back when they don't need to be) or the lower level kids (why should I move on when they're not ready...are they not worthy of learning the material?). Having multiple levels of a course (honors and regular, for example) can help somewhat with this issue, but even within those leveled courses there's still variation in where students are at.

So I transformed my class into a Mastery Learning class. Each student moved on when and only when they were ready. They chose the ways in which they wanted to learn the material, used me and their peers as resources and personal tutors, gained the background knowledge that they'd been missing, filling in pieces, learned new content and moved on to the next lesson whenever they could show me mastery of the current lesson they were working on.

Kids that got something moved on quicker. Kids that didn't get it as quick got to take the time, and get the attention, they need to get it and they moved on as well.

I spent two years teaching in this way and am a true believer that it's the ONLY way to get each student to learn the content. Yes, it was hard work on my part. Yes, it added some chaos to my life, but it was the only way that every student walked out of my classroom at the end of the year LEARNING chemistry and not just "not-failing" it.

I wrote a book on teaching science with Mastery Learning, published by NSTA Press and you can find out more about it at the NSTA store website.

Because I'm not the only one that teaches this way and I certainly don't have all the answers to all the questions someone might ask about teaching this way, I started a website (www.ScienceMasteryLearning.com). It's very new (which means there's not a lot there yet...but hang in there with me and please share and participate to help it grow!), but I'm hoping it will turn into a community of teachers that will share, ask and discuss with each other how to best become serious about ALL students learning science.

Do scientists have to sell their souls to be successful at public communication?

2011-01-27T16:49:00.001-06:00

Do scientists have to sell their souls to be successful at public communication?

Is knowledge worth much if it can't be effectively communicated? Helping future scientists learn to communicate to broad audiences

2011-01-27T16:16:00.002-06:00

GK-12 is an NSF-funded program for graduate students in the science, technology, engineering and math fields that’s a win-win-win-win situation!

Win! Amazing science that’s not communicated effectively isn’t worth much. The goal of the GK-12 program is to provide training about and experience at communicating and collaborating with a wide variety of audiences—general public, funding organizations, policy makers, science colleagues outside their area of specialization.

Win! Instead of paying for your education by being a TA and teaching generic intro level courses, spend time reflecting on the best ways to communicate your specific research and practice that communication by bringing your research into high school classrooms.

Win! The program allows for a flexible schedule that a traditional TA position can’t match. If you need to be in the field to gather data during a specific few weeks, or you need to run that instrument on a specific day and you need a large chunk of time to do it, that’s OK. The graduate student works with the partner teacher in the high school classroom to determine what schedule is effective and beneficial for all involved.

The year-long fellowship includes pays the fellow’s tuition expenses, health care and a $30,000 stipend for the student.

Kansas State University has a thriving GK-12 program. For more information visit www.ksu.edu/gk12