I have a problem and would like to know if anyone can help. I have a love/hate relationship with blended classes. I love the quality student to teacher and student to student contact time afforded by blended classes. I hate how many students do not make good use of their out of class blended time. I hate how it seems there must be a trade-off between quality class time and hit and miss out of class time. There must be a better way.
Just to add another layer, I would like my student teams to work together on some of their out of class blended days. Students see the benefits of teaming. When I have teams sit on the patio or in the hall, they can complete much work in their teams. Just having that extra space that allows them to not be sitting back to back in a crowded classroom really helps, but they still need supervision. Instead of monitoring a group discussion, I must patrol the teams to answer questions and to insure students are staying on task. There must be a better way. There is too much good about blended classes to give them up just because there are some problems.
One other great attribute of blended classes is that they prepare students for college. I still vividly remember when the president of San Jose State back in 1965 addressed my freshman class. He said he really appreciated the opportunity to meet all of us this one time because only half of us would make it to graduation. Wow, a fifty percent dropout rate! That really shocked me until I learned how many distractions there are in college. The current average college dropout rate seems to be about thirty percent. That’s still a lot of students who never learn how to discipline themselves to study independently. What better place to learn independent study habits than in high school? In college there are not helicopter parents and no incentive for teachers to be helicopter teachers. Blended classes can provide that transition students need to be successful in college.
So, here is the question. How do we wean students from depending on a closed and structured classroom environment without losing them to the myriad of distractions right outside the classroom door?
This second semester I am going to try some “in house” blended teaching. Students will have time on their own outside the classroom, but must stay on campus. Since I will be in the gigantic I-Center, there should be plenty of quiet spaces for students to work. But I need ways to insure they are really working. One idea is to have team members spend the last few minutes of the class time summarizing what they have learned is a short discussion. They will record the discussion and turn in the recording as an assignment. Another is exit tickets. These can be done as a team or individually at the end of the class. The students would not be in class, but it is the same idea. I thought of journals, but so far I have found that students tire of them and I don’t have time to look at them. Maybe I am doing it wrong. This is not a long list of ideas. I would like to have a few more, especially ones that work.
I don’t want to go into this cold turkey. I will have had enough of that after Thanksgiving. Please let me know if you have tried anything to monitor blended independent time work. What has worked for you? What has not worked for you? Am I the only one who thinks about this?
Mitch
I have been looking at Trello https://trello.com. It is sort of a collaborative To Do list, but you can put board of DONE, DOING, and TO Do. This could be a possible exit ticket that also acts as a project management tool.
ok… so I suppose my wondering is : what problem exactly are you trying to solve? you want an accountability of the time spent on task?
hmmm sooo… I would argue the point of blended is that it does not matter when exactly they do something right? It is about them getting it done… I suspect that what you are asking them to to do is more important. Is the activity attainable but also not too attainable?
So systems that would allow you to track end product… Virtual platforms do include Trello or other project management software (Asana)… or things like Voicethread…
The problem we had last year in American Studies was that students were not prepared for in class assignments because they did not do the independent time assignments. We did give zeros or low grades for the incomplete work but that did not help them do well in class when they needed the knowledge from the independent work.
The problem I have this year is with blended students distracting my students who are working outside the classroom. There appear to be quite a few students who just wandering around the common areas with the objective of socializing.
I think we need to get students more accustomed to blended classes. Many appear to have the attitude that they can play now and do their work later. My students are now staying in their teams and actually helping each other do their "blended" assignments. Next semester I am going to make this process more formal so I can do more discussion groups with half the class at a time.
Creating assignments that they can do outside the time frame of the school day has helped my blended class immensely. Using discussion boards and scaffolded work that leads to in-class collaboration needs to be built as an expectation on days that classes do not meet. The distractions of having other students intruding because you are having students do "independent" work within the confines of class time….is this really a blended class then or are you simply using class time for independent work? The key to success in a blended is the authenticity and engagement of what is expected outside of class time; otherwise, things will fall apart. I don't think going back to create more control is the best route, to be honest, if you want to maintain the benefits of the blended format. I use check-ins on specific days of the week to check that "outside the classroom" work is being done, and if it isn't I create separate outreach for those students. In the same way that students not doing work in a "regular" class creates problems when you ask them to collaborate, the same will happen in the blended. It would be interesting to see what kind of assignments you are asking for on non-meeting days.
You bring up quite a few good ideas. I do not have a blended class and am not in timeframe where I can send students home. My short time in the I-Center has already shown how productive it can be to split the class in a blended like fashion. What I am doing more and more is having my students become both researchers and teachers. They really get into this. When they discover information on their own, it is so much more exciting for them than having it told to them.It becomes something they are eager to share with their teammates.
That said, there are many distractions on campus, especially when there are many students just wandering around with apparently no immediate goal other than talking to others. I like the idea of blended, but, like teaming, it does now work overnight. There must be a concerted effort to make it work. Once it does work, it is so great, but it will never work without the foundation.
This is a topic I think would be great for a conversation between interested teachers.
Mitch, I feel like I'm in a similar situation. Ian and I are teaching Bio Honors in class, but it feels like it could benefit from an "almost blended" approach. I say "almost blended" because most of the assignments are a mix of independent work with a team. I feel like we just can't let them go free because so many days require that all the teams share out with their conclusions. We should get together and brainstorm some strategies.
Mitch I find that the accountability portion for what is done outside of the class is hard. When there are specific readings or tasks that are standard for everyone that seems simple. My Social Advocacy class has a research portion at the beginning of their team's semester long project that is very self driven. I help facilitate so that individuals are working on a separate part of the issue to help benefit the team, but the value of the work differs.
I try to use the example that we have roughly 3 1/2 hrs of contact time in a class. If at least 2 hrs of that is dedicated to me letting them focus on their project, they should produce 2 hrs worth of work. I do this so those that struggle with Blended see that the time they are away from class should be documented somehow. The simplest way that I've found to do this (but probably not the best) is to have a shared doc that I can edit. All their shared information (for the team) is on there and I can see who wrote what and at what time. Basically at the end of the week I grade them on whether they have completed at least 2 hrs worth of work, regardless where they did it.
I think one of my biggest concerns regarding them not using time here away from the classroom (roaming the halls) is that I'm putting extra work at home for them that they wouldn't have had. If students complain about the pressures of too much work at home, aren't I adding to that.
The plus is that there are sometimes tasks that are better suited for outside of the class hours. For example if I have a team working on inhumane treatment of animals, after school they can easy go to ARF for a meeting to talk with professionals there.
In a nut shell. I don't have any great answers and am working through it too.