Flipping the Chips are Down Lab

The following article was featured in Carolina Tips in the fall of 2014, the online newsletter by Carolina Biological - a vendor that sells lab supplies and equipment to science teachers. 

For science teachers considering flipping their class, a great way to test the waters is by flipping the lab. Instead of using class time to lecture about and demonstrate steps in a lab procedure, consider creating short videos known as labcasts. Students can view these labcasts prior to the experiment. Watching the steps and seeing the equipment can help minimize confusion and provide clarification. Additionally, the use of labcasts can save precious class time for the actual experimentation and post-experimental analysis.

Teaching natural selection with the Chips Are Down lab

In the evolution unit, the Chips Are Down lab (which is a student favorite) does a wonderful job simulating natural selection. In this lab, students experience how populations change and generate a wealth of data to analyze (Fig. 1.).

Students play the role of predators and exert a selection pressure on a population of butterflies made of differently colored construction paper. The prey are placed on a multi-colored cloth background (Fig. 2); some of these butterflies naturally camouflage on the background, while others are easily spotted. The student predators take turns eating the prey by picking up the first butterfly they see. The predators eat a certain number of prey, then the game is paused to allow the prey to reproduce. Rounds of predation are followed by recovery of prey. After a few rounds, you see certain colored prey going extinct, while others increase in frequency (Fig. 1). The students witness natural selection in action and frequently cite this lab as the activity that helped them to understand this abstract concept.

The problem is the written instructions are somewhat confusing, no matter how many times they have been revised. Merely reading the steps does not clarify the procedure; students actually need to see it in action to fully understand it. In the past, I've typically done a round of predation and recovery with the entire class in order to help students visualize the steps. While this demonstration has been helpful, it is time consuming and limits the amount of class time available for repeating trials, troubleshooting, and data analysis. In addition, the post-lab discussion typically must wait until the next lesson.

 
Figure 1   Frequency of different colored prey after generations of predation. 




Figure 2   Image of a multi-colored background. 

I've solved these problems by creating a labcast demonstrating the Chips Are Down lab. In this short video, I explain and demonstrate the procedure and address the commonly asked questions. Students are required to watch the labcast prior to the lesson. I set aside only a few minutes at the beginning of the lesson to answer questions; this time is much shorter than the demonstration and Q&A sessions of previous years. After the change, students were able to execute several rounds of predation, perform calculations, and discuss the conclusions, all within the same lesson. With the saved class time, students were even able to test and compare data generated from different backgrounds. All of these changes, made available through the labcast, only helped to improve student understanding of natural selection.

The relative ease and low cost of making videos, coupled with the potential gains of leveraging this technology, make a compelling case for flipped learning. Labcasts allow you to smoothly transition to flipped learning in your science classes. These videos can clarify lab procedures, save precious class time, and improve student learning.

Collaboration vs. Individual Accountability

Masur // Wikipedia

Recently, our department members have discussed balancing collaboration with individual accountability in flipped classes. A concern was raised that there is potential for students to become too reliant on the teacher for help. It is a fair question to raise; whenever students are allowed or asked to collaborate, there's the risk of group-think, as well as some students using group members, or in this case, the teacher to do the lion's share of thinking. 

I would be remiss if I failed to point out that the concerns about individual accountability are not uniquely tied to flipped classes. It's really a question about individual accountability wherever there is collaboration. I have a handful of students, against my desire, who choose to do most or all assignments alone. There are others on the opposite end of that spectrum and need my probing eyes to ensure that they are not allowing their group members to do the heavy lifting. 

With that being said, it's important to be mindful of individual accountability. Last year, I struggled with some students moving through activities but not having a sense of what they should've learned. I think two major changes have helped with this problem. One change is moving toward a standards based grading format and away from assignment completion has emphasized learning. There is little incentive to race through or copy assignments. Students will only have to redo assignments and/or complete remediation activities if they struggle on assessments. Perhaps I shouldn't broadcast that I don't even see some assignments (like notes, problem sets or practice quizzes) unless there is an issue. Copying work from problem sets won't improve student grades at all, especially since answer keys are published. Their grades are solely based on what they demonstrated on summative assessments - not how many solutions they may have copied. The second change is the hot seat discussion. Before taking a quiz, students have to demonstrate learning on an individual basis. If I detect issues, then I can intervene. Again, there's little incentive to move on without understanding the content because the hot seat tends to, but not always, reveal issues. 

Some other ideas that come to mind: 

1. mandate some of the assignments as individual only.
2. set aside time each period or week as individual work time.
3. mandate one-on-one check-in conversations with the teacher.
4. encourage students, through journals and other reflective activities, to be mindful of how they complete assignments and their contribution to groups.
5. in group activities, assign roles and make use of jigsaw activities. 
6. cap group size to pairs (or triplets) depending on the workload.
7. collect data (eg Google form) from students about group dynamics and intervene when appropriate.

Interestingly, I've heard rumblings of groups being dissatisfied with some of their members on the current project on Genetic Disorders. In this project, students are arranged in pairs with individual roles; it will be obvious which person didn't hold their weight. Perhaps since the focus in this case is  completing the assignment/artifact, rather than demonstrating learning, some students don't feel the crunch of individual accountability. 

I'm unsure if it's possible to eliminate any chance that students will rely too heavily on others. There are adults who take advantage of group members. At the very least, if we're diligent, we can minimize that chance and de-incentivize relying on others. 

DIfferentiation is Good Teaching: A Review of "Differentiation From Planning to Practice"

After learning some frameworks and theories about differentiation from Carol Ann Tomlinson's “How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms", I yearned for more practical strategies. Rick Wormeli's “Differentiation From Planning to Practice" did not disappoint. Rather than summarizing the book, I'll list what I learned, both things I already do that are consistent with the research and things I want to do in order to be more consistent.


Helpful Research

1) Differentiated Processing: One piece that was new to me is differentiating processing activities. Currently, I use the same processing activities after a video lesson - practice quiz, guided notes, and posting and responding to online discussion forums. It's now clear to me that students process the material in different ways and ought to have options for processing the content. What I'll plan to do is give students more options of processing after a lesson - perhaps they can use their journals to choose from the following:

• summary paragraph
• Creative RAFT, poem or story 
• Complete or create a graphic organizer 
• Compare & contrast assignment 
• Frayer method 
• Play a game with a twist - like charades, pictionary, charades or taboo

The processing activities can be organized in think dots, cubing, think tac toe or choice boards. This approach could work with my current system because the processing activities can be seen as level 1 out of 4 in my standards based grading world.

2) Building background or give experience to get background: I already accomplish this through the exploration activities prior to lessons. Even if students don’t possess the optimal priming experiences, they will gain this experience through the exploration.

3) Priming- I prime student brains by offering guided notes, a list of the "I can statements” they will learn about, a unit overview and potential agenda for each lesson.

4) Primacy-Recency theory: we remember the first and last things we learned in a chunk of time. This means the first and last minutes of class are crucial. I have to do a better job designing warm up activities that engage students fully in content. I have to move away from the housekeeping activities at the beginning of class. The same thing can be said for exit tickets; they should be as closely related to content as possible. Housekeeping and non-content related metacognitive activities can be done at other times in the lesson.

5) Explore similarities & differences: Students learn more effectively when they are asked if asked about similarities and differences. This is consistent with the idea of schema and brains wanting to make connections between preexisting schemata. In some processing activities, I need to ask how things are examples or non-examples of a concept.  The tricky thing is the brain is ineffective at remembering distinctions if learned at the same time. If possible, I need to teach  similar ideas days apart.

6) Novelty: While it’s important to prime the brain, it’s also important to switch things up and break from the routine. Brains are effective at picking up contrast and important moments. I need to encourage more divergent thinking by asking for arguments against what they learned, describe concepts without using certain words, etc.

7) Memory: Middle school students are typically limited to memorizing 5 unrelated facts.

8) Socializing: I already structure my course to be as social as possible. Most assignments and tasks can be completed in groups or as individuals. Students can pick and choose to what extent they wish to be social and with whom.

What’s clear to me is the heart of differentiation is just good teaching research-based practices. Providing choice and alternative routines and assignments are also important but meeting the needs of all students has to start with solid pedagogy.

Related articles

• A Review of "How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed Ability Classrooms"
• Differentiated Grading: Fair Isn't Always Equal

Standards Based Quiz Spotlight: the Anatomy of Mastery Learning Cycles

Roughly there is one quiz per "I can statement." Students receive permission to take the quiz once they have completed the one-on-one conversation with me about the "I can" statement, called the "Hot Seat." Typically each quiz consists of five questions, designed at the application level on Blooms Taxonomy. Most of the questions are problems that assume the understanding of concepts and integrate the vocabulary and are similar to problem set questions. 

The quizzes are online and hosted on Moodle. Moodle is a powerful LMS because it supports randomized questions pulled from a question bank. This is important in an asynchronous class because the quiz questions are different on each attempt - whether a new student or the same student on a subsequent attempt. This reshuffling of questions allows for retakes and keeps academic integrity between the first or the last student to take the quiz on the same topic. 

Students must earn 4/5 or 80% to pass the quiz. This score is consistent with the school culture & my expectations. Once they pass the quiz, they earn level three out of four, which is meeting expectations. Most of the questions are multiple choice or calculation questions. I typically don't prefer to use multiple choice questions but use them when I'm able to input every possible choice as answers. For example, when figuring the probability in Punnett Square problems, the only possible answers are 0, 25, 50, 75 or 100. I also add a choice "there's not enough information to determine." With these types of problems, multiple choice can effectively gauge understanding - assuming there have been other assessments in the learning cycle. Some "I can" statements can't be quizzed at the application level w/ MC questions or calculations. In those cases, there are alternatives - building a model, writing a lab report, completing a lab or a case study. 

If students fail a quiz, there are certain tasks they have to complete, which differ based on the number of times they have taken the quiz. For every failed attempt, students have to make corrections and fill out a form describing their errors.

 Students also have to do the following:

• after the first attempt: students complete any skipped problems from the Learning cycle problem set. Earlier in the cycle, students solved mandatory problems and as many optional problems as they felt the need to complete. After failing a quiz, the optional problems become mandatory. The hope is practicing more problems will help students review and prepare for a second attempt. 

• after the second attempt: students complete at least one remediation activity. The remediation activities for a learning cycle may include online readings, simulations, extra problems and/or student made videos and problem sets. 

• after the third attempt: students have to create their own set of problems and include solutions. In many ways, this last option is similar to the mastery projects in the next phase of the learning cycle. 

Once students pass the standards based quiz, they are able to move on to the next learning cycle. If they wish to further explore the same topic and/or show a higher level of understanding, they can complete mastery projects before moving on to the next learning cycle. 

Related articles

• Spotlight on Mastery Choices: the Anatomy of Mastery Learning Cycles
• Spotlight on the Mastery Phase - the Anatomy of Mastery Learning Cycles
• Spotlight on the Hot Seat: the Anatomy of Mastery Learning Cycles
• M&M - Moodle Quizzes in a Mastery Course
• How to Write Calculated Questions in Moodle Quizzes

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. 

The Sweet Sauce: Reflecting on "Flipped Learning - Gateway to Student Engagement"

I recently finished reading "Flipped Learning - Gateway to Student Engagement." This book chronicled the path several teachers took from Flip Class 101 to Flipped learning. Typically, teachers who go down the flipclass road start by assigning students to watch videos at home and complete traditional homework at school. Their next destination, often called the Second Iteration or flipped learning, can take on many forms, from mastery, to PBL, to UBD, to Explore Flip Apply or even to my model, Mastery Learning Cycles. The difference in these reiterations is the focus is on learning and how best to facilitate it.  

The "final" destination of each teacher varies based on teacher personality and philosophy, strengths and weakness, interests and preferences, as well the culture of the school and support from administration. The most salient conclusion from this book is there really are countless types of the "sweet sauce." To borrow an analogy presented in the last chapter, Prego became successful because, rather than trying to design the ONE spaghetti sauce preferred by most people, they departed from their competitors by creating varieties of sauces which turned out to be the best for a variety of people. Everyone has their own favorite flavor of spaghetti sauce, just as flipped teachers eventually adopt the model that works for them. 

So far, my sweet sauce seems to be a combination of Standards Based Grading and Mastery Learning Cycles. Students are assessed on how well they understand specific objectives and demonstrate important competencies, rather than merely being evaluated through points or averages. Students demonstrate mastery of these competencies by progressing through  modified 5E learning cycles at their own pace. The flipped videos are only used in one particular phase of the learning cycle to supply content knowledge and at other phases just to provide instructions for labs and other important procedures. This iteration will continue to evolve and hopefully closer approach my sweet sauce. 

The other useful application of the Prego analogy relates to student choice. Just as consumers are free to choose the spaghetti sauce they prefer, many of the flipped teachers highlighted in the book eventually provided choices to their students - choice in how they acquire content (My video? Another teacher's video? Textbook? Website? Simulation?) - how they processed or applied content (Lab? Problem set? Game?) - and how they demonstrated learning of the content (Quiz? Project? One on one chat?) 

The potential of flipped learning is indeed a gateway to student engagement. 

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