Planning for the Fall: Flipping my class and shadow grading

 In a previous post (Pre-Pre-(Pre?)-Planning: Fall 2021 - Standards based grading, flipped classroom, corequisite support, and maybe group work?) I discussed my plans for the summer. I just completed the course Flipped Plus Model taught by Jessica Bernards and Wendy Fresh, and my plans for my fall course have changed slightly. This course I am teaching is a corequisite support version of our 100-level business math class, and contains both prerequisite math topics, and success skill assignments. This will be the first time I have taught a face-to-face course since March of last year, and for various reasons 5/8 of the course (100-level math content) will be face-to-face, with the remaining 3/8 (prereq math topics and success skill assignments) online.

In that previous post I discussed standards based grading, and while it is something I'm still interested in I think I am going to focus for the month of August on 'flipping' my course. This is half inspired by Flipped Plus Model and the wealth of tools and thoughts the instructors shared during the workshop, a quarter inspired by a past colleague who used the method to great effect (Hi Joan if you're reading this!), and a quarter inspired by the fact that for this coreq course I have been using an adaptive homework system for the prerequisite content that I have not been entirely happy with. On this last point, I felt a little too 'locked in' to their content and while I had the option to ask for additional standards and materials I feel more comfortable creating my own content and changing it as needed.

So does this mean I'm going to drop the standards based grading component? For students, yes. For myself, no. To determine what videos to create I am going to continue creating my own student learning objectives (SLOs) for the course, delineate the expert, proficient, developing, and novice levels, and build my videos, lessons, activities, and homework around them. Below is an example of drafts of two SLOs and their levels. 

1.1 Find the equation of a line given information about its graph.

Expert - The student can find the equation of a line given a variety of information about its slope, if the line is parallel or perpendicular to other line(s) or points (individual or intercepts), or the graph of the line. 

Proficient - The student can find the equation of a line given a variety of information about its slope, if the line is parallel or perpendicular to other line(s) or points (individual or intercepts), or the graph of the line. Student may still struggle with finding the equation of vertical or horizontal lines.

Developing - The student can find the equation of a line given the graph of the line. Student struggles with finding the equation of the line given information about its slope, if the line is parallel or perpendicular to other line(s) or points (individual or intercepts). Student still struggles with finding the equation of vertical or horizontal lines.

Novice - The student can sometimes find the equation of a line given its graph. 

1.1 Graph a line given its equation, points, table, or other information.

Expert - The student can graph a line given its equation, points, table, or a verbal description of the line.

Proficient - The student can graph a line given its equation, points, or a table of values.

Developing - The student can graph a line given points, or a table of values, and can sometimes graph a line given its equation.

Novice - The student can sometimes graph a line given its equation, points, or a table of values.

By the end of August I hope to have all of these SLOs created (100-level and prereq topics), videos supporting them, learning assignments students should complete before class (part of the 'flip'), activities for the start of class to dial in the misconceptions or difficulties with the material, practice assignments (homework) for students to complete during and after class, and an alignment of learning assignments, activities, practice assignments, and homework to the SLOs. 

I'll use a conventional weighted grading system (25% final, 25% quizzes, 25% assignments, 15% activities, 10% success skills) BUT if I have the SLOs aligned to all of these assignments I could shadow grade them according to a standards based scheme. Doing this for a year would have a number of benefits;

• I don't have to convince students of two new things I am doing; flipping and standards based grading. Having taught with POGIL in the past I am experienced with addressing student concerns proactively around new instructional methods, but I am still uncertain of the specific issues students will have with either of these systems. Doing one at a time I can fully address the concerns of one before moving on to the next. 
• I can use the year's data to convince students next year that this grading method would either improve their grades, or not harm them. 
• While a bit of extra work (two grading schemes) if I get all my materials prepped I can used that saved time towards this additional grading. I'm not entirely convinced that I have to grade throughout the term, I could do this additional grading at the end of the term. 

With the fall return I would like to have as much of my course 'figured out', and the Flipped Plus Model workshop absolutely helped with that. Below are slides from my first day presentation I've updated after the workshop, hopefully explaining to students what we'll be doing. 

[Figure 1: Flow chart and bulleted list of course assignments and activities meant to answer the question "How are we going to learn?"]

[Figure 2: A table showing the hours between 11:00 AM and 2:30 PM of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, filled out with the various assignments and activities meant to answer the question "When are we going to learn?"]

So where is this going to break? What is going to happen to unravel all this careful planning? Could it be student resistance? I'm hoping by giving a good 4/9 of class time to homework students will be motivated to try to complete it in order to reduce their workload outside of class. Granted getting them to complete assignments an hour before class might be a bit of a challenge. This 'flipping' of when students complete their homework is entirely the point, but I will have to work a bit at selling it. 

I could also break during August, trying to get all this done with my other work. I'm still late on a few projects from Spring, which I hope to wrap up this week. Having the list of SLOs is going to be really helpful, that way I have a list of specific topics to address and I don't have to worry about what I'm creating videos on. I'm not terribly concerned with the how of creating videos, I've been using OBS for quite a while now and have a good idea of what I want to create.

The only thing I'm still struggling with is the recommendation from the Flipped Plus Model to create guided notes for my videos. If I use Google slides to create them, and use those slides to create the videos that will cut down quite a bit on production time. I guess my resistance is more a gut feeling about 'spoon feeding' students, and yet a number of my colleagues have successfully used similar guided notes. I suppose I'll just have to let my ego take a hit if it means supporting students. 

What am I not seeing? Where are things going to go wrong? Be my Karnak and help me find the weakness in this plan.