Fall 2021: Thinking about modalities

 A colleagues (If you're reading this, hi Allie!) has been asking some really good questions about how we'll return to campus, and what the experience of everyone teaching online might mean for our face-to-face (F2F) courses. In responding to one of her emails I started the following chart comparing different aspects of online, F2F, and flipped classes. I've since added a few more items. 

	Online	F2F	Flipped
Timed Assessment Logistics	Range of times, online, could be submitted on paper, some auto-evaluated and some faculty evaluated.	Specific time and place, on paper, there could be some variation in questions among students, faculty evaluated.	Same as F2F
Timed Assessment Questions	By necessity of online honesty could be more conceptual, but likely includes computational questions.	More computational, but could shift towards more conceptual if more online assessments include them.	Same as F2F
Learning	Self-taught with reading, videos.	Through in-class lectures, activities.	Partially self-taught with readings and videos, more difficult topics in-class.
Online Discussions	Bread and butter of student and content presence	Almost nonexistent	Same as F2F
Activities	A good number of online classes use activities in groups or individually	About 1/3 of f2f instructors use group-based activities	Unknown
Homework	Required after learning, online discussions, and activities. Mostly auto-evaluated	Required after in-class sessions. Some auto-evaluated, some faculty evaluated.	Required before, after, and during in-class session. Most auto-evaluated, some faculty evaluated.
Projects	Used for some courses and summative assessments.	Very few use projects, possibly upper-level courses and stats.	Same as F2F

It does seem like every implementation of the flipped classroom is a bit different, but I stuck to the common elements; some instruction and/or homework before in-class sessions, doing some (if not all) homework during class, etc. One thread you'll see running throughout is the use of auto-evaluated or faculty evaluated assessment or homework questions. This is becoming a bigger theme for faculty to consider for various reasons. 

• Auto-evaluated work is by definition evaluated by a computer and answers are generated by a computer, meaning students can use computers (Desmos, Photomath, etc.) to answer them. 
• Most of the time the only feedback students get with auto-evaluated work is whether the student is right or wrong. Yes, some systems provide some feedback, but as far as I am aware no system can detect what error was made and provide specific feedback on how not to make that error. Faculty evaluated work on the other hand can provide specific feedback.
• Faculty can save a huge amount of time using auto-evaluated work. 

To balance these concerns of academic honesty, feedback, and time savings it seems some middle ground should be established, like using these systems for specific functions like additional practice on computational skills.

In thinking through the feedback that online homework systems do provide, there is a trend towards using more general growth-mindset type feedback. Having seen some of these examples I worry that they appear tone deaf, and do more harm than good. If a student answers a question in correctly, seeing "Keep trying. We learn from mistakes." auto-generated by the system might not have the same effect as a human providing that feedback AND identifying what the mistake was and how to prevent it in the future. Another colleague is very interested in growth-mindset based feedback, and it seems clear that you have to do a lot of thinking about the student, their work, and what message would support the student to provide effective feedback. An automated message does not seem comparable. 

What do you think? Are online courses going to start resembling f2f courses? Are f2f courses going to start resembling online courses? What is your stance on auto-evaluated work or faculty evaluated work? I'd love to hear what you think. 

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.