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. 

Pre-Pre-(Pre?)-Planning: Fall 2021 - Standards based grading, flipped classroom, corequisite support, and maybe group work?

After putting together a grant proposal and wanting to do something other than the list of tasks on my plate left over from last term, I thought I'd spend today prepping for my Fall 2021 course; face-to-face business math. I was really inspired by Matthew Lewis & Michal Ramos from Yakima Valley College, and their talk Thinking About Assessment and Grading Differently: Standards‑Based Grading in Precalculus at WAMATYC this year. Students can get so focused on points and grading, that they act as grades aren't related to understanding. In watching their talk I am hopeful that tying a student's grades directly to their understanding of specific learning objectives, they will be more motivated to do things that actually impact their grade.

This chart really hit home how standards based grading could be accomplished, which I have shared in a past blog post. 

In reviewing their materials it seems that I have a few choices to make. 

• How should I assess the different levels of understanding?
  While they focused on online assessments (using WAMAP) being an online course, I'm thinking of moving some of them to face-to-face assessments. Their plan to have students complete the different levels of understanding of an objective sequentially (An Expert assessment doesn't open up until the Proficient assessment is 100%.) is well done in the system, and the questions themselves are great! Of the Expert questions I looked at, they included things like randomly generated values (a standard in WAMAP),  analyzing an incorrect answer, and short question path with question parts that opened up based on previous responses. All of these things avoid the 'static' questions I see in so many online systems, and would help prevent sharing of solutions and cheating. 
  
  My current thought is to have a similar system in WAMAP where students can complete assignments (homework really) aligned to the Novice and Developing levels of each objective, and students can retake them as much as they want with no penalty. This is also a corequisite support course, so expanding these novice and developing levels to include prerequisite knowledge would seem appropriate. Expert and Proficient levels of objectives would be assessed through face-to-face weekly quizzes, and some other types of assignments, possibly projects, discussion forums, or something else, I'm not sure. I like to limit quizzes to 30 minutes, 5-6 questions, and at the low end this means that I'm limited to something like 25 objectives (5 questions per week * 10 weeks * 1/2 for the number of objectives (Expert and Proficient) I can assess) which seems doable. That leads me to...
• What objectives are you going to focus on?
  Since assessments are directly related to objectives, I'm constrained by how many objectives to include. These would absolutely need to be student readable, so including vague or abstract objectives that 'cover' a lot of content would not be good.
• How to handle retakes?
  Students are not going to get things right the first time, and I need to figure out when this is going to happen. Do I plan on some time at the end of class (10 min) where students can complete a question?
  
• What will feedback look like?
  In focusing on the specific learning objective, and in creating thoughtful rubrics, I am hoping my feedback will be more targeted about the specific area of confusion. Obviously I'll keep providing process feedback, and discussing ways for students to improve their work. 
• No due dates?
  Really? Am I going to be ok with that? In making the assessments the main way students can reach higher levels of each objective I'm hoping they nudge students into preparing for them. At the same time I need to be deliberate and focus their attention on completing their work on a regular basis. 

Because this is a corequisite support course I have a number of success skill assignments tied to different components of the course. The time management assignments are ok, but I feel students don't connect when they should complete their work. I'll be trying to work backwards from the assessments, to the assignments, to what they should be doing each day. I have other such assignments on growth mindset, deep versus shallow processing, etc. but I'm wondering if maybe I should focus on time management as the central skill, and bringing up other affective domain skills through it. For example, sure you block out time for homework, but what should you be doing (and not doing) during that time? If you're feeling unmotivated to complete your schedule, why, what are those unresolved feelings that are motivating your procrastination. 

The course includes eight hours of instruction (5 college-level, 3 pre-college level) but I am only meeting for five hours a week, with the other three being online. In flipping some of that material, especially the prerequisite pre-college material, I'm hoping to make sure students are prepared for class sessions. In not having due dates I'm a little concerned about students not completing the flipped instruction, how else am I going to get them to do it?

For now I feel like I have more questions than answers, but over the summer I'm hoping to dial in a course plan I can use for the year. Here is roughly what I'm thinking;

- July: Decide on course objectives, levels, rubrics, and create some of that material in WAMAP. 

- July 20, 22, 26: I am taking the Flipped Plus Model PCC continuing education course run by Wendy Fresh and Jessica Bernards.

- August: Create flipped instruction videos and linked class materials.

- September: Revisit Success Skill assignments, and decide what would be helpful to students. 

Given my other projects this feels manageable if I spend 10 hours a week on it.

Your thoughts on any of this? Something I'm not seeing or overlooking? Am I going overboard? Let me know in the comments.