The Perusall Experience

Throughout my journey in flipped and mastery based learning, I’ve come across many apps, websites and tech tools. I routinely joined the Early Adopter crowds for a lot of wonderful tools. Nowadays, I rarely add a new tool. I much rather mimic the behavior within my LMS or Google Drive ecosystems - even if performed in an inferior way. Perusall may have broken through my apprehension. 

I’ve been aware of Perusall for a couple of years or so. It is a social annotation tool that began with giving teachers the ability to assign texts and embedding questions and discussions withi  the text. Students can add and respond to these annotations. Had I been an English teacher, I probably would have dove right into that early adopter pool. But since the majority of the content in my class is covered through flipped videos, there was only limited value added from that tool. 

Even when Perusall began to include videos into their platform, I remained hesitant to embrace this tool. Yes, my students could benefit from greater interactivity in my videos. It is surely better than relying exclusively on basic checks for understanding through EdPuzzle or the post-video discussion forums or Google Forms assessments. But I’ve remained skeptical on just how MUCH better is the Perusall way of handling videos. 

Two recent experiences have caused me to reconsider. During the pandemic, I’ve really been much more mindful of how I spend my face to face time. With the changes caused by remote learning, this time is scarce and more precious than ever. I’ve leaned more into student collaboration and discussion. I’ve also turned over class time for more student presentations this year. Student presentations are tough for me as a flipped teacher because I rarely use synchronous time to lecture anymore, so it stands to reason that using precious face to face time for student lectures is also problematic. But, presenting is an important skill, so I press on. I’ll come back to this idea later.

The second experience is the recent asynchronous conference: The Perusall Exchange. This was a two week conference about Perusall hosted on the Perusall platform. As far as I can tell, the presenters were all college professors who use Perusall to support student learning. On the first day, I “attended” two presentations. These presentations were actually flipped videos created by the professors and posted within a course hosted on Perusall. The presenters posted questions and discussion starters, while audience members responded and participated. Audience members also asked questions to presenters, who were able to respond mostly asynchronously. Perusall allows for comment tagging and also lets you know who else is watching the same video. This was truly an innovative and interesting professional development experience. I was able to learn at times convenient for me. But I’ve also been able to interact with the presenters, evidenced by a response to a comment I left at 5am on the first day. 

One idea I’m excited about is offloading the student presentations to videos. This is not a new idea. I’ve done this before with limited success because student peers had limited engagement with student created videos. The logistics were tough to figure out. How can I encourage legitimate engagement with student created videos and hold students accountable? How can I help student presenters encourage engagement with their content? If my student presenters post their videos to a class on Perusall, then I can help presenters create engaging questions and prompts throughout the video, give peer audience members guidance about how to engage and hold the audience accountable for their level of engagement. When students create presentations, I’m not as interested in whether peers can answer factual content questions, as they would with my videos. Rather, I’m interested in peers being engaged with the provocative questions and issues presented by other students. (To be clear, I am also interested in students engaging with my videos in this way as well, but the entire learning cycle of activities are designed to elicit this deep and rich application of the content I present. I don’t have the luxury or even desire to create these post video activities aligned with student presentations. Rather, I need a quick yet powerful mechanism for students to engage with their presentations of their peers.) Perusall appears to address this need. 

The beauty and unintended consequences of this approach is now it would absolutely make sense to make the most of Perusall. Prior to using Perusall for engagement with student created content, using Perusall for the ocasional article or text within my class did not seem worth the hassle. Adding this function with Perusall now makes a lot of sense and I'm looking forward to testing this in the new school year. 

Keeping Track in a Mastery Based Class

After wrestling for years with different systems for keeping track of student progress and interventions for struggling students within an asynchronous course, I finally arrived at a solution that works for me. Learning Management Systems that I have used don't appear to offer helpful internal structures for self paced learning, so I had to develop my own tools. Before diving into the nitty gritty, here's the gist: I set up a suggested pacing calendar that represented the slowest pace allowed in the course. Once the suggested pacing calendar was created, I made a Google tracking Spreadsheet with all of my students in one place, then used the Import Range formula to automatically update progress in personalized spreadsheets shared with students (and parents and/or tutors as needed.) Within these spreadsheets were predetermined check-in times which also served as triggers for contacting parents or advisors.

The course calendar was the slowest pace allowed in the course. Since the course was self-paced within reason, I no longer distinguished between class and homework. I only shared my expectation for what work needed to be completed by the end of each lesson. The standing homework was to complete whatever did not get done during class. I did not check where students were at the end of each class, unless they needed that support; I was only concerned about their progress at the end of each 8 day cycle (my school has an 8-day schedule) but I recognize a weekly or even shorter cycle might be more helpful for other schools, divisions, etc.

Suggested Pacing Calendar

Students were highly encouraged to show me their work after completing each assignment in order to prevent bottlenecks on Day 8 check-ins. Whenever a student satisfactorily completed an assignment, I updated the master copy of the pacing calendar spreadsheet shown below. Note: in the past, I asked students to update their own progress but found that the students who most needed this type of support were also unreliable in updating their own tracking sheet.

Here's some useful information to help read the spreadsheet:

• The left column has names of students in each section and the top row has the name of the assignments.
  
• The cells in green with an "X" indicates a student has completed the assignment, while cells highlighted red with "no" are missing or incomplete assignments. (Note: a slightly different system could have grades rather than the binary "Yes/No" system described above.)
• The black columns represent a check-in time at the end of every 8 day cycle. 
  

Master Spreadsheet

If a student did not have all green cells at the designated check in time, then on a second tab shown below, I colored the cell red to indicate "behind" the suggested pacing within the course. I blind copied students who were behind after each cycle with a warning email.  For students who I knew there were other significant issues, I sent individualized emails and copied their advisors. For students who were behind two cycles in a role, I sent home an Academic Notification to parents. In our school, these interventions are sent for a number of reasons, including failing an exam or missing several assignments. As the year progressed, I lifted these notification rules for some students; Eventually by the 4th quarter, I did not have to do the check-ins for most students.  

Cycle Check-in Tab

After using this system for a few weeks, students wanted me to post or share access to my master spreadsheet because it helped them keep track of their own progress. Since I did not want students to have access to their peer's data, I used the Import Range formula to link my master spreadsheet to individual student spreadsheets. Shown below is an example of one student's spreadsheet. By using the Import Range formula, I was able to copy a particular segment of my master spreadsheet and place it in an individual student's spreadsheet. Whenever I edited the master spreadsheet, the individual student's spreadsheet also updated. 

Individual Sheet

An added benefit of individualized spreadsheets was being able to share it with parents, advisor, learning specialist, and/or tutor. If I wanted certain students to skip an assignment, it was easy to update the spreadsheet with that information as well. If there were optional enrichment assignments or particular assignments for different groups of students, this system also accommodated for that as well.

Recent Course Updates and Future Plans

It’s been awhile since I wrote an article to my blog. I’m unsure if it was due to lack of inspiration, distraction, complacency or some combination of different reasons. My class has continued to evolve and I made important changes to the course. I hope to continue to improve my course and reflect about it online.

Since the last blog post, these are the changes I’ve made to the course:

• SBG improvements: science process standards that span between units as part of my SBG focus
• Flirtation with gamification: leader-board and other graphics showing the number of level 4s and mastery projects completed by individuals and classes.
• More voice & choice: robust offerings of optional units and mastery projects.
• Differentiation in content delivery: iBook that accompanies most of the videos.
• Lab report improvements: Less focus on formal lab report writing and greater emphasis on flexible formatted lab write ups.
• More flexible hot seats: students decided how to show they understood the standards rather than answering questions from me.  

Upcoming this year:

• Personalized learning continuum: as I continue to work on voice & choice and differentiation, there will be entire learning cycles that all students will be able to choose. Rather than only offering this choice to students who finish the course earlier than others, there will be two stopping points where all students will have to select a learning cycle from a menu of topics.
• Claim Evidence Reasoning: as I moved away from the traditional format of lab reports, I was proud to see improvements in overall quality, yet many students needed more direction. I will use the technique of Argument Driven Inquiry, also known as Claim-Evidence-Reasoning for lab assignments. As a department, we agreed to adopt Claim-Evidence-Reasoning for lab reports because it helps to focus the students on the important elements of experiment analysis.

I am happy to report that the journey started as part of my shift to flipped learning has opened avenues for the course that I would not have predicted. These changes have led to a more engaging, rigorous and authentic experience for students.

Straddling the Asynchronous - Synchronous Line

Perhaps the greatest sense of pedagogical innovation and challenge of my course is the desire to offer differentiated pacing. The last few years, my flipped course has been asynchronous. 

One on hand...

It's been a great experience. Students have learned to become more responsible for their learning and self-directed. Asynchrony has also allowed students to slow down when they struggle with the content and speed up during other times. This has given me an opportunity to work with individual students on their particular needs. Excelling students can learn content beyond the scope of my course if they finish the course or particular units quickly. Struggling students no longer have to worry that their questions or misconceptions are slowing down the rest of the class.

On the other hand...

I've found in past years that the majority of students who work from behind are due to time management and motivational issues, rather than profound challenges with the content. The reason for moving to an asynchronous class is to allow students to learn at the speed which helps them learn most effectively. Unfortunately, while asynchrony has benefited the excelling and struggling students achieve this goal, it has been a struggle for some of the middle students with executive functioning and motivational issues. In essence, I've given these students the opportunity to slack off. In a synchronous class, these students would have been forced to learn more. 

Another issue is when students are learning and struggling together, it bonds them in an inspiring way. It creates a class culture that is hard to recreate in an asynchronous class. 

On both hands...

Last year I made a conscious effort to recreate some of the synchronous experiences in the asynchronous setting. Students responded to warm up and exit ticket prompts in their journals at the beginning and ending of lessons. We played formative assessment games and did peer instruction at the beginning of other lessons. Students planned out their week at the beginning of Mondays and reflected about their week last thing on Fridays. These were helpful strategies to develop student metacognition. But I've found this year's cohort do not require the same level of reflection and for the most part can handle the content with ease. Therefore, these ideas are not as helpful. 

This year, I've made some changes that I hope will better serve these students. Rather than giving away complete autonomy of pacing, my suggested course calendar represents the slowest speed allowable. Students have permission to move ahead but cannot fall behind. After students fall behind beyond a time frame (every 8 days), I send home academic notifications. When it becomes obvious that a student is in jeopardy of falling behind, I try to send a warning email to the student prior to sending home a notification. Since students are no longer required to map out their week, I do not start Monday's with the planning activity. In fact, I try to give the students as much asynchronous time as possible since I'm holding them more accountable to work at a certain pace. This also means doing away with the journaling. Instead, I've been more strategic about how to use synchronous times in class. 

So far, I've kept the formative assessment games and peer instruction when it appears necessary based on how well the students are grasping the material. In addition, I've reinstituted the Socratic seminar discussions. Perhaps I hastily gave up the seminar discussions last year - they are a true joy. They breathe a life into the class that was missing last year. Students report enjoying the discussions because they find the articles and controversial issues interesting. They also enjoy switching to full class activities once in awhile. To facilitate optimal engagement, I give students a heads up of the scheduled date for the seminar and encourage students to be ready to talk by that date.

The final synchronous exercises I've reinstituted is the full class exam and common due dates for lab reports/write ups. As I predicted in a previous blog article, these deadlines have helped keep students accountable for pushing through the curriculum at a reasonable pace. The biggest deadline is also at the end of quarters; students must earn level 3 on specific "I can" statements by the end of the quarter. 

I'm hoping the suggested pacing calendars and the synchronous scaffolds of quarter, semi-weekly, test, lab report, and full class discussion deadlines will provide enough structure and accountability in my asynchronous course to help students who need traditional elements of schooling. I also hope that these attempts of support will still allow students to learn at their own pace instead of being rushed through the curriculum. In essence, I hope I'm successfully straddling the synchronous-asynchronous line. 

Looking Back on My Second Year of Asynchronous Learning

Due to specific issues in asynchronous learning last year, I started the year by scaffolding mastery. The scaffolding seemed to help students learn the organization of the course before attempting the challenge of asynchronous learning. This year, students were closer together at the end of the year, than in the previous year. While most students were successful, the students who lacked motivation and follow-through continued to struggle.

The most frequent piece of advice my students left for next year's students have to do with keeping up in an asynchronous class. To help students stay afloat, I will mandate cumulative exams. I hope the exams will act as deadlines without completely taking away independence, which many of my students valued. The added benefits of cumulative exams is preparation for final exams and it provides more data for me to evaluate student progress on learning targets.

I tried differentiating the final exam with three versions based on percent of the content covered: 90%, 97% and 100%. After some protests from students, I let students choose which final to take rather than mandating the version. The overwhelming majority opted for the most difficult exam and averaged a "B+." Unfortunately, the students who opted for the lower exams performed poorly, with only one student earning a respectable "B." Aside from a few marginal passes and the lone "B", the handful of students who opted for the less rigorous finals failed. I wonder if announcing there will be different finals altered the study ritual for struggling students. In addition, all but one of the struggling students worked from behind and used a lot of effort in the final weeks to play catch up, rather than prepare for the final. Another confounder is these students also failed other final exams.

Earlier in the year, I missed the synchronous discussions of past years like Socratic Seminars. Perhaps along the way, I got use to doing without them but I no longer see them as a great loss. If I'm being completely honest with myself, these discussions weren't as transformative and powerful as I know they are in some other courses. At this point, offloading these discussions to online forums in the engagement segment at the beginning of learning cycles, seem to be an appropriate decision.

I do, however, need to refocus on offering some synchronous activities like formative assessments to build a sense of community and maximize opportunities for students to collaborate and help peers. In an asynchronous class, group member choice is limited to the students working on the same step. Including more of these synchronous assessments and learning opportunities, students can collaborate with new group members.

The asynchronous debate is still the biggest source of concern and pride. In the exit surveys, many students cited the independence as their favorite part of the course, while roughly the same number cited it as the most challenging aspect of the course. Right now, I plan to continue running an asynchronous course, not only for reasons cited in previous blog posts but because so many students never have to opportunity to learn how to work independently, set priorities and manage their time. These skills are needed by adults but are infrequently developed in primary and secondary schools. I'll continue to fight the good fight...

Related articles

• Scaffolding Asynchronous Learning

Natural Selection Meets Flipped Mastery

The following article was featured in Carolina Tips in the spring of 2015, the online newsletter by Carolina Biological - a vendor that sells lab supplies and equipment to science teachers. 

The benefit of mastery learning has been known since Benjamin Bloom's research¹ in the 1980s, as he sought to find a teaching method as effective as individual tutorial in the group setting. At the time, mastery learning was impractical because it entailed students working at their own pace and the teacher administering multiple individualized assessments. With today's technology (online quizzes with randomized questions, free video hosting sites, and learning management systems, to name a few), mastery learning is now possible.

Mastery and flipped learning complementary

The unit on natural selection in my 8th grade Introductory Biology course has been revamped by mastery and flipped learning. Mastery and flipped learning complement each other. Offloading lectures to videos allows students to work at their own pace students because they can watch or re-watch a lecture when they are ready.

The natural selection unit starts with an exploration, the Chips Are Down lab, where students simulate natural selection and are challenged by using this experience to hypothesize how populations evolve. After an initial hypothesis, students take notes from a video outlining Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Using the principles of natural selection learned in the video and experienced in the exploration, students complete a problem set to practice generating hypotheses about different populations’ adaptations.

Students are then assigned differentiated case studies based on level of difficulty. For example, advanced students may have to analyze contradictory and incomplete data to hypothesize why humans evolved different skin colors. Struggling students analyze straightforward data to hypothesize why clovers have stripes and produce cyanide in some environments and not in others. These case studies, and tons of others related to biology, can be found on the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science Web site.

Unit assessment

After students apply their understanding of natural selection to different scenarios through the problem set and case studies, they are asked to revise their initial hypothesis from the exploration about how populations, in general, evolve. After a one-on-one or small group discussion with me, students receive permission to sit for the unit assessment. If students are denied permission or under-perform on the unit assessment, they are required to make corrections and complete remediation activities aligned to the deficiencies or misconceptions uncovered during our talk or unit assessment. Students who wish to demonstrate learning or explore the topic at a deeper level can tackle optional projects.

Tailored to students' needs and abilities

Combining both flipped and mastery in the natural selection unit has allowed me to strategically provide targeted intervention and differentiate content and assessments. In the past, advanced and struggling students had to complete the same assignments on the same days. The advanced students, who understood the concepts the first time they heard them from me, had to wait until the course caught up to their pace. Struggling students had to move on to the next lesson, whether they understood it or not. With flipped and mastery learning, students who are struggling, advanced, or in between all experience an education tailored to their needs and abilities.

¹Bloom, B. 1984. “The 2 Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as Effective as One-to-One Tutoring.” Educational Researcher 13, 6: 4–16. http://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf.

Quarter One Reflections

After a quarter into the school year, I have a solid grasp of the effects of the changes I've made. Here are the chief thoughts I have about quarter one.

Standards Based Grading

The transition to standards based grading has been mostly smooth. This year, I have a much better handle of what my students know and do not know. The SBG Grade book on Haiku is easy to use. The color codes make it easy to see which standards each student or class section is still working on. This has helped me identify which students need targeted intervention.

Standards Based Gradebook on Haiku

At first, it took students some time to understand the concept of "I can" statements and my particular system for showing learning. They seem to have figured out the system. 

The most noticeable difference is the quality of my reports. I've always struggled with writing first quarter reports because I barely feel like I know my students well enough by that time in the school year. This time around, I had plenty to say. Rather than including the general fluff, my reports focused on what my students knew and were able to do and the ideas and skills they still found troubling. Adding this component to my comments about performance on major assignments, my general impressions and suggestions moving forward, the reports are much more informative. 

Haiku LMS

The new learning management system is quite effective. The layout is beautiful and the interface is intuitive. I have consolidated many of my online tasks within Haiku - recording and sharing grades, assigning and collecting student work, repository of resources and interactive components like polls, practice quizzes and discussions. In the past, many of these roles would have been offloaded to separate resources. I'd like to move my actual quizzes to Haiku but it does not support randomized questions from a test bank, so I still need Moodle for that purpose. 

Haiku can be a bit buggy though. There is a limit to how many objects can be embedded on one page. Some students complained of notoriously long loading times. A student suggested that I make more usage of subpages. Now each step of the learning cycle is housed on its own page. This has significantly increased loading speeds.

Subpages on Haiku

Asynchronous learning

As mentioned in a previous blog post,  asynchronous learning continues to allow students to submit their best work and internalize a growth mindset. Most students are keeping to a reasonable rate, even though there are students who I believe can work faster. I've made some changes this year, which hopefully will help students adjust to the responsibility of setting their own pace. The most important change, at the request of a student, was allowing students to create their own weekly plans.

A student's week plan

Creating the plans take a lot of time so I've been trying to encourage students to send their plans to me during the weekend - with varying degrees of success. At the very least, students are using less class time to create their plans and becoming better at working while waiting for my indication that their plans are satisfactory. For students who show difficulty with this task, I've started to collaborate with them to create pacing calendars for a few weeks, rather than letting them work alone on their weekly plans. 

Mastery projects

A handful of students have elected to complete the mastery projects. In most cases, these projects have been good enough to help other students learn the content. My library of student made teaching materials is growing and some students have already taken advantage of this library to prep for a quiz. I recently added a leader-board to acknowledge students who have completed mastery projects- in hopes of motivating a few more projects.

Mastery Project Leader-board

Quiz retakes 

This year, I have a better handle on whether students are ready to take quizzes or retake quizzes. The hot seats have been a nice addition. The only problem I've seen with the hot seats is when students opt to take the quiz a few days after completing the hot seat discussion. 

After the first batch of quizzes, I've added a few layers of permissions for quiz retakes. In addition to submitting quiz corrections and explainations of the mistakes, students have to do one more thing for permission for a retake. Making the students go through a few obstacles seems to help students take each attempt more seriously. 

Labs 

The switch to inquiry based labs has proved to be most effective with asynchronous learning. Last year, I tried a combination of inquiry and full class labs. I struggled with students who got to the labs first and figuring out whether they should use last year's data. It became confusing for students to know whether they were using this year's or last year's data sets. This also prevented me from adjusting procedures. 

For the full class synchronous labs, students working at a slower pace had to rush through content or temporarily skip steps in order to be "ready" for labs. Now that students design most of their own labs, there is no confusion about what data to use and no need to worry about skipping or rushing through steps - students do labs when they are ready.

So far, I've managed to keep up with the demand for lab materials. I place small lab kits around the edge of the counter space on labeled lunch trays. Since different students perform different labs, I only need to make a small amount of materials available for one particular lab. The trick is to have several labs prepared simultaneously and to anticipate when students will be ready for future labs. Below you can see how I organize lab materials.

DNA extraction lab materials

UV bacteria lab materials

Protein Synthesis model exploration materials

Upcoming changes

In the upcoming quarters, I'd like to incorporate some synchronous projects to help me experiment and think through PBL and 20Time in future years. I also want to offer optional content and let students who work ahead design their own parts of the course. 

Scaffolding Asynchronous Learning

After last year, I was convinced that there was something to asynchronous learning but changes needed to be made in my execution. There were too many students scrambling to catch up at the end of the school year. I asked students to share advice for next year's students; overwhelmingly, they told students not to fall behind. Not to mention, I struggled with how to run labs and maintain test integrity in an asynchronous course all year. I knew big changes needed to follow in order to maximize asynchronous learning. The two major changes needed were a shift in mindset and scaffolding mastery. 

1) Shifting Mindset

I fundamentally believe students learn at different rates and some need more or less practice in order to learn a new concept. However, I didn't organize my course as if I really internalized those beliefs. I tried to have the best of two competing ideas. I let students work through units asynchronously with common deadlines, like when to be ready for exams or labs. I thought the exam dates would help motivate students to work as fast as possible, which it probably did for some; however, for students who truly struggled with the content, it encouraged them to rush right before the exam, which was counterproductive and anxiety producing. I finally decided that I couldn't have it both ways. To that end, I finally agreed:

A) Not all students will get through the entire course.

• I've identified the most important units; some units will be mandatory, while others will be optional. Students who work behind, will be allowed to skip the optional units later in the course. 

B) Not all students will have the same final exam.

• Students will be tested on what they covered throughout the year. Some finals will be about 15 learning cycles, while others will be about 12 cycles. Students will get two grades on final exams, one based on how well they performed on their version of the final, while the other will be based on how much content was on the final. I still need to develop this idea but I'm thinking, for example, a student could earn 98% on 80% of the content.

C) No more common lab or exam dates. 

• Exams will be similar to the quizzes in that each student will have a different set of questions and take it when they're ready. As much as possible, labs will be truly inquiry-based where students design their own procedures. This should limit the pressure to perform the experiments as an entire class. 

2) Scaffolding Mastery

Other than a change in mindset, which led to its own set of changes, I was encouraged to scaffold mastery at a presentation during FlipCon15. Some of the struggles from last year were due to some student's inability to handle working at their own pace. They need to develop this skill. Instead of starting the year full fledged mastery, I started the class similar to flipped class 101 (video at home, application at school.) I told students what to do in class and for homework the first few weeks of school. If some students needed an extra day or finished a bit early, I allowed for that accommodation; however, major assignments had deadlines. This was important because students needed to adjust to the workings of a flipped class and standards based grading before handling the asynchronous part. 

After the first few weeks, the students became familiar with my way of doing things. At this point, I told students that they could work at their own pace but to use my pacing calendar as a guide.

Pacing Calendar

The calendar suggested which assignments to do in class and for homework. This allowed for more freedom while having some supports in place. 

After two weeks of encouraging students to use the suggested calendar, I had a check-in conversation with my classes. One student offered a game changing suggestion - ask students to plan their week. Eureka! At the beginning of the week, students now create a plan for the work they plan to complete each class and at home. I sign the plan to acknowledge agreement. These planning talks have been eye opening, especially the realization that some students have no idea how long some activities will take. 

I've recently put other supports in place to help students plan. For example, I've asked students to create their plan as the standing weekend homework assignment each week. This helps save precious class time. I want the students to start the week with the ball in their hand. I'm even encouraging students to send their plans to me via email so that I can send them feedback before their first lesson of the week. 

The second thing I did was to create a unit overview chart.

Sample Overview

The chart lists each activity sequentially with an estimated amount of time it will take to complete some activities. The chart also includes any useful notes. For example, I specify when an activity must be completed in class or without group members. I also list sub steps or special instructions when applicable. The idea is to offer a quick reference to allow students to make informed decisions about their plans. 

At the middle of the week, I ask them to reflect in their journals about their progress, then again at the end of the week. I also have a template or graphic organizer to help students save time recording their plan.

Template planning calendar

I'm hoping this constant cycle of planning and reflection, along with the unit overview and graphic organizer will help students improve their weekly plans. 

Asynchronous learning can improve student outcomes, as students are better able to meet their potential. However, students are not used to this amount freedom and run the risk of squandering the opportunity. As educators, we have to provide the guidance to help students maximize their learning. I hope the change in mindset and scaffolding mastery will accomplish this goal. 

Related articles

• Rethinking Unit Exams in an Asynchronous Course: Week 13 reflections
• Running Labs in an Asynchronous Course

Gratitude for 1:1 iPad Program

Faculty iPad with Friends Seminary Logo on Cover

 Leaders in different fields make decisions and policies without always being able to predict the exact consequences of those decisions. I suspect the same thing occurred at my school when we instituted a 1:1 iPad program years ago. Even though I personally prefer laptops for science due to their superior graphing options and ability to play Flash-based simulations, I have to admit the 1:1 device initiative set the conditions for programmatic innovation. 

 Our 1:1 iPad program started in a select number of grades a few years ago. I'm thankful my first full year flipping Introductory Biology coincided with 8th graders having their own iPads. At this point, I no longer print materials. Students decide whether they want to complete their work in Google Drive, Notability or print it. They decide whether they want to submit their work via email, Google Drive or show me in class. Since students work at their own pace, they need to have constant access to course materials. At any instant, students need to be able to watch a video, take an online quiz, or do some research. None of this is possible, or at least as seamless, without some sort of 1:1 program. 

It's easy to take the 1:1 iPad program for granted. However, I'm reminded of its importance when a student forgets to charge his or her device, or is waiting for repairs. Without a laptop cart as a backup during those periods, some students would have a difficult time progressing through the learning cycle. 

I'm unsure if the school leadership predicted the rise of blended, flipped or asynchronous courses years ago when we insitituted one of the earliest 1:1 iPad programs. What I do know is the 1:1 iPad program has been crucial to the success of my course. Students have benefitted tremendously, have become more independent and self reliant, in part, due to the ubiquitous devices we've come to take for granted. Thank you to the school leadership for setting the conditions for flipped learning before I even became aware that I wanted to go in that direction.

A Review of "Mastery Learning in the Science Classroom"

Kelly Morgan's book on mastery science classes only spans 68 pages but is full of insight and practical advice. The book outlines her motivation and journey to mastery learning, while also dedicating a chapter to the research, some of which, has long since been forgotten.

Perhaps the most interesting point made in book is the revelation that research supported Mastery Learning decades ago. Mastery learning classes were unsustainable at the time and researchers stopped performing studies because of this lack of feasibility. There's an odd yet powerful observation Kelly makes: researchers stopped investigating mastery, not because it didn't work, but because it did work - there was just no way to pull it off!

Fast forward a few decades, the changes in technology do allow for mastery learning. It's no surprise that the pendulum shifts back to mastery.


I also appreciated some of the practical recommendations. Some of the particular suggestions are a bit dated since technology continued to advance even since the publication of the book a few years ago. Nevertheless, the idea of using an LMS, online varied quizzes and offloading direct instruction to an on-demand platform are still crucial to the success of mastery learning classes.

I highly recommend this book for flipped mastery practitioners or those who wish to explore the possibility. It is a great read!

Interview about Asynchronous Learning and Standards Based Grading

Yagraph // Wikipedia

I had the privilege of chatting with Jonathan Bergmann on his radio show, The Flipside on the Bam Radio Network. Primarily we talked about my journey to flipped instruction and standards based grading. The interview is linked here. 

Aside from my nagging habit of saying "direct instructional days" rather than "direct instruction days," I thought the interview ran smoothly. I also see why Jon was an award winning educator; even as an interviewer, he was captivating, reminding me of his keynote address at FlipCon13. 

The messages I hope were conveyed during this interview:

1. Flipped learning saves class time and creates more opportunities for greater engagement and individualized learning.
2. Asynchronous learning allows for differentiation.
3. It's possible to adopt aspects of flipped instruction and it is also possible to successfully adopt flipped instruction (and mastery learning) wholesale, without a long period of transition.
4. Middle school students can thrive in a flipped class.
5. The assessment based system of grading is broken because it can hide what students truly do and do not understand.
6. Standards based grading is the solution to the broken assessment based grading system. 

Running Labs in an Asynchronous Course

familymwr // flickr

 Recently on twitter I was asked how I manage labs in an asynchronous course. The answer is disappointingly too long to fit into a tweet. I promised to write a blog post about it; truthfully, I've struggled with this issue all year and was hoping to read someone's blog post to get some guidance. Perhaps readers may learn what to avoid or become aware of questions that need answering after reading here.

I've treated different labs differently - obviously! I've filled small bins with 2-3 lab setups. When students are ready for a particular lab, they watch a labcast video, complete any pre-lab assignments, grab a setup, then perform the lab. While this works most of the time, I learned quickly the flaws of this plan. 

Students who work ahead: 

Large sample size is important in science. Access to statistically significant (or insignificant) data is perhaps even more important than students designing experiments, in my humble opinion. The reason I haven't moved completely to inquiry labs is because I need each group to replicate trials of the same procedure to pool the data for statistical analysis. This presents a new challenge in an asynchronous course. Students who work ahead only have access to a small sample size. I've solved this problem by publishing data from previous years. Whether a student collects data early or late, their data will be compiled with other years of data. 

Lab setup: 

Labs are messy; some materials can't be neatly stuffed into bins. Some labs require time consuming set ups, like water baths. Some require perishables which have to be ordered weeks in advance, while others need to used within three days of arrival. 

I shifted to a synchronous approach for some labs. The resource intensive and perishable-heavy labs just require too much work to plan for different lab dates. I still offer some flexibility. I make some labs available for a few days. This gives students the time to catch up. I don't want students performing labs before they are relevant. My labs are strategically situated at specific parts of the learning cycle. It's important to allow some time for students to complete the prerequisite steps before performing each lab. 

I'm dissatisfied with my system because I still have to rush some students through steps and prevent others from going ahead. I dislike encouraging students to skip steps in order to complete a lab.  

Future Plans: 

It's clear to me that what's best for student learning, and not my convenience, is to make labs available only when students are ready for them. If my mastery learning cycles are designed in a pedagogically sound way, then rushing or prohibiting students from moving ahead is counterproductive. I also still believe that students must work with large sample sizes and inquiry is an opportunity for students to engage in critical thinking and take ownership of their learning. My solution is to have students design all/most of their experiments and stipulate they must have large sample sizes in their experiments. 

This will require some adjustments. I'll have to alter the labcast videos to introduce the challenge, show some of the available materials and offer suggestions. This will take a great deal of organization and resources. I'll have to develop an effective technique to predict when students will be ready for particular experiments and use that information to strategically order materials. 

The Urgent Need for Standards Based Grading

I love moving to an asynchronous flipped course. However, it is clear to me that the next major paradigm shift must be toward Standards Based Grading. 

The asynchronous nature of the course works well for so many reasons,which I have mentioned in the past. My major struggle is the model seems to encourage, or at least allow, students to submit late, and typically useless, assignments at the end of the quarter. Most of these assignments are irrelevant at quarter's end because students already completed their summative assessments. Students submit these late assignments solely to increase their average. While the flipped model decreases the opportunity for the typical "students playing school," clearly some of that is still happening in my course! I could ban submission of assignments after the subsequent steps but that would treat the symptom, rather than the cause.

The culprit seems to be grades, or at least the traditional assessment based grading system. I incorporate assignment completion percentage into the quarter averages to encourage students to do their work. But this seems wrong to me. If we have to assign a grade, shouldn't it be based exclusively on what students have learned, rather than behavior, participation and assignment completion and timeliness rates? Don't get me wrong, I understand why these aspects are included in grades; teachers want to encourage certain behaviors while discouraging others. The easiest method is including specific behaviors in the grading system. Unfortunately, the result is inflated grades for compliant students and deflated grades for noncompliant students. Rather than grades reflecting learning, grades merely correlate or relate to learning in the traditional system. This is an odd paradigm when you really think about it! 

Standards based grading can be the solution. Students are graded exclusively on how well they demonstrate mastery of learning objectives or standards. Students can choose which learning activities (readings, videos, labs) to complete. They can redo assignments to learn or practice objectives before opting for a graded objective check or mastery quiz. If students want or need to retake the summative assessment, they can revisit some or all of the learning activities -  but I won't include the completion percentage rate into the grade. I haven't figured out the logistics but I am sure that my current grading system needs a makeover.