A Defective Method

No system is perfect. And no school will ever be perfect. But there's a difference between not achieving perfection and purposely creating a system that you know won't work. My school currently has a system for "credit recovery" that is designed to fail.

Like just about every school, we have some students who struggle in our classes. For a small number of those students, we have a "credit recovery" system in place, where they work with an online learning platform to make up classes they have failed. I have a ton of problems with this, not the least of which is that it's completely designed around the idea of "recovering credit" and not around the idea of learning (or what the student even needs). But even with those concerns, I would be willing to give it a pass if it provided a viable way for these students to jump through the hoops, graduate and move on with their lives.

I haven't ever had any interaction with our system but, yesterday, I had the opportunity to help one of our students who was working on their Geometry class on the platform. I was a tad bit surprised when the problems I was helping her with involved the Law of Sines and the Law of Cosines. Back when I was a full-time math teacher we taught that in Trig, but I figured perhaps with the changes due to Common Core that too had moved down into Geometry.

When I had a chance to look later, however, I discovered that while it's an option in Geometry, it falls in the "+" category, which means it's "Additional mathematics that students should learn in order to take advanced courses such as calculus, advanced statistics, or discrete mathematics." That hardly seems appropriate for a student who is struggling in mathematics and is participating in our "credit recovery" option as sort of a last-chance.

But, again, I thought perhaps it was something we had decided as a school was to be included in our Geometry classes in which case, while I still didn't think it was appropriate for this student, it would at least be consistent with our regular classes. So I went and talked to our Math Department and we don't teach Law of Sines and Cosines in our Geometry classes. Which means this struggling student, who is in our online-only, credit recovery option, is being asked to do more than the students in our regular, teacher-led classes.

But it gets worse. Because after the relatively straightforward Law of Sines and Law of Cosines problems (assuming that's not an oxymoron), she was presented with a problem something like the following. (Because it's in the online platform, I don't have access to it to see exactly what it said but, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, I feel relatively confident that this is essentially it.)

Using the defects method, which relationship represents the Law of Cosines if the measure of the included angle between the sides a and b of ΔABC is less than 90°?

Well, I read that a few times and was stumped. I had never heard of this "defects method." The student couldn't help me with what it was, so I asked her if we could go back and look at the "instruction" she had presumably had over this method previously on the platform. She said we couldn't because she was "locked out" now that she had finished that part. (I can't independently verify whether that is accurate, but she certainly thought it was.) So I googled "defects method Law of Cosines" . . . and found nothing.

Well, that's not entirely true. I found four or five links for it - all with various versions of that same problem that students had posted to various sites looking for answers (like this one). Unfortunately, I had a meeting to get to so I couldn't investigate further at that point, but later I spent more time googling and still came up with nothing. I did find something similar when talking about hyperbolic triangles (and I'm pretty sure even Common Core doesn't include that in high school Geometry), but nothing for 2D geometry. That night I asked on Twitter, and no one knew. And the next day I went in and asked our Geometry teachers, and they had never heard of it.

Now, none of that necessarily means it doesn't exist or that there perhaps wasn't some instruction in the online platform that would help explain it, but it does again make you wonder why it's being included in a credit recovery course for struggling math students. We don't cover it in our regular Geometry classes, none of the math teachers in the building (or who saw my tweet) have ever heard of it, and Google can't seem to find it either. Why in the world was this question there?

There are larger problems here, of course. How and why did my district select this platform? Who is overseeing the content and ensuring that students are actually getting content similar to the courses they are theoretically "recovering credit" for? Why do we think that students who struggled in a regular classroom, with a teacher and classmates to help them, is suddenly going to be successful as a learner in a learn-on-your-own online platform (even if the platform wasn't serving up the wrong content)?

Clearly, this "credit recovery" option is not at all about what the students need. It's not about what they want or need to learn to be successful in their future, it's not even about them being successful right now. It's just a desperate attempt by the adults in our system to somehow, some way, get these students to pass our required courses. As I said earlier, as horrible as that sounds, given our current system, if it actually accomplished that then I'd be okay with looking the other way (while still vigorously arguing to change the system). But it doesn't. We're taking these students that we've already failed and setting them up to fail again.

I still don't know what the "defect method" is in relation to triangles and geometry, but I have a pretty good idea what a defective method looks like in practice. If "defective method of instruction" was a standard, we would "exceed expectations."

How To Learn Math

I've decided to attend Stanford. Sort of.

I just enrolled in EDUC115N: How to Learn Math:

In July 2013 a new course will be available on Stanford’s free on-line platform. The course is a short intervention designed to change students’ relationships with math. I have taught this intervention successfully in the past (in classrooms); it caused students to re-engage successfully with math, taking a new approach to the subject and their learning.

In the 2013-2014 school year the course will be offered to learners of math but in July of 2013 I will release a version of the course designed for teachers and other helpers of math learners, such as parents. In the teacher/parent version I will share the ideas I will present to students and hold a conversation with teachers and parents about the ideas. There will also be sessions giving teachers/parents particular strategies for achieving changes in students and opportunities for participants to work together on ideas through the forum pages. The ideas I will share will be really helpful as teachers prepare to implement the new Common Core State Standards.

Taught by Jo Boaler, this course is for both teachers and parents and will focus on the following eight concepts:

1. Knocking down the myths about math.
2. Math and Mindset.
3. Mistakes, Challenges & Persistence.
4. Teaching Math for a Growth Mindset.
5. Conceptual Learning Part I: Number Sense.
6. Conceptual Learning Part II: Connections, Representations, Questions.
7. Appreciating Algebra.
8. Going From This Course to a New Mathematical Future.

This course is completely online, and free, and is loosely structured so you can more or less go at your own pace. I've already connected with several folks on Twitter who are enrolled (hashtag #EDU115, unless we're instructed otherwise), so I'm hoping the discussions will be rich, relevant and meaningful.

The class "starts" on July 15th and "ends" on September 27th (although I anticipate "finishing" it sooner if the course allows as things get really busy once school starts up). If you have an interest - as a teacher or a parent - consider joining us. There's no cost, and really there's no huge commitment - if you end up not fully participating - or not participating at all - that's okay.

H1N1, Skype, and a Possible Tipping Point

Anne Smith has a nice post up about how she has students who are home sick Skyping into class in order to stay connected.

What was really impressive was that the students’ willingness to be connected back into our class when they are at home feeling crummy. They want to participate, they want to stay in touch, they want to continue to learn and aren’t letting the flu get in their way.

I think this is a nice use of Skype, and I'm sure many other teachers are doing similar things. I know other folks have said this, but I wonder if this outbreak turns even more serious with lots of absences or school closures, if that might accelerate how quickly schools start to move more of their instruction online (in some shape or form). Could H1N1 end up being a tipping point?

Online Student Teaching?

One of the sessions I attended at the NCTE Convention was centered around online instruction. It was presented by and made up mostly of college professors, although there was at least one other high school teacher in the room. It was a very interesting session and spurred a couple of thoughts.

All the attendees discussed how their respective institutions were really pushing online instruction, both at the college level and – in the case of the high school teacher – at the high school level in Ohio (apparently they are considering a plan like Michigan’s requiring at least one online course to graduate from high school). The reasons were many, including teacher shortages, budget constraints, competing with other institutions, and responding to demand from students. They quoted the prediction that if current trends continue, by 2019 over half of all high school classes will be taught online.

They then talked briefly about some of the benefits to students (flexibility, convenience, choice), the challenges to faculty (tech literacy, significant planning, availability of resources and programs , tech support, high expectations from students regarding communication, evaluation of student’s work), and what must be done to embrace the future (training, funding to develop and implement tech to be used for online classes, meetings to design curriculum suited to online classes).

That was all good, but then the interesting thing (interesting at least to me) was that much of the rest of the session was spent discussing how horrible online instruction was, with quite a lot of student-bashing thrown in. Now, let me state my bias up front, I’m not convinced that totally online courses, given the technology and the pedagogical knowledge we currently have, are the best solution right now. I probably fall more into the “hybrid” camp right now, with a combination of face-to-face and online, at least pending further advances in the technology and our knowledge of how best to use it (with the caveat that this could change rapidly as the technology and our pedagogy get better).

Having said that, however, I was amazed that they spent this time complaining about what was wrong with it, when I thought a better use of the time would’ve been to talk about how we can do it better (because, I agree, from what I can see we are often doing it poorly). They all pretty much said they didn’t have a choice in this, they were being made to do this. Since these were not folks that were going to be able to change those decisions, I kept expecting we were going to shift back to, “Okay, I’m already teaching this online course (or soon will be), let’s talk about best practices” or something like that, but we never did. The overall feeling in the room was one of fear and, while some folks think fear is a healthy motivator, I think in this case it was getting in the way.

The second thought was spurred by the statement that one of their universities was pressuring them to offer a Masters in Education (getting a teaching credential) completely online. They were questioning the wisdom of giving someone a degree to teach that they might never meet in person, which I thought was a valid concern. They would still have to do student teaching, so at least there would be some chance to evaluate their people and teaching skills.

But that last piece of information is what really spurred this post. Because it got me to thinking about that possible “50% of all classes being offered online” statistic. If that statistic turns out to be true (or even close), then is it possible that face-to-face student teaching might actually be a bad thing for some teacher candidates? In other words, if a teacher is destined to teach in an online setting, then shouldn’t their student teaching also be online? Just as the idea that getting your degree completely online and not actually student teaching face-to-face seems like not the best idea for preparing a teacher to enter a face-to-face classroom, then isn’t the idea of preparing to teach online by teaching face-to-face just as bad?

I don’t know, but it makes me think that colleges of education are going to have to think long and hard about what they’re doing, and perhaps start training teachers for both environments. Obviously some of the qualities necessary to be a good teacher are the same in both settings, but some of the pedagogical techniques and the experience working with students might be very, very different. I think it’s safe to say that colleges of education have a huge task ahead of them and I’m curious if there are any teacher prep folks reading this that could perhaps comment on this. Are any programs currently having their pre-service teachers student teach (or co-teach) any online courses?

What do you think? Should teacher candidates be required to “student teach” an online course?

Strang's Classroom is the World

Just a quick note of an interesting article in the Denver Post a few days ago that discusses the increasing number of options for "attending" courses at various colleges and universities via the Internet for free. There's not a lot new here, as they talk about the usual suspects: MIT's OpenCourseWare and similar offerings from other universities, iTunes U, UC Berkeley lectures on YouTube, etc.

But I thought it was worth noting for a couple of reasons. First, because I'm seeing more and more stories like this in the mainstream press - not in the technology section of the particular publication, but in the general news session (this particular article was filed under "World News"). That seems to indicate a more general acceptance of this as appealing to a wide audience - it's newsworthy for everyone, not just for tech folks.

Second, there were a few quotes that I wanted to pull out. Emphasis in each quote added by me:

"It's almost as good as being there," said Whelan, the Massachusetts retiree, of the MIT classes he has sampled. "The only thing that's lacking is the pressure." He says he usually doesn't do the homework assignments, but adds: "Now that I'm not in school, I don't have to do that anymore."

. . . Figures from the Sloan Consortium, an online learning group, report about 3.5 million students are signed up for at least one online course—or about 20 percent of all students at degree-granting institutions.

. . . But MIT's 2001 debut of OpenCourseWare epitomized a key insight: Elite universities can separate their credential from their teaching—and give at least parts of their teaching away as a public service. They aren't diminishing their reputations at all. In fact, they are expanding their reach and reputation.

. . . "If you're going to work as a public health professional, you need the certification," Carson says. "If you're working in a community"—say, in Africa—"you don't need the certification. You just need access to the information."

. . . Fears that technology would hurt class attendance have proved unfounded, at least at MIT, where 96 percent of instructors reported no decline.

. . . "My life is in teaching," [Strang] says. "To have a chance do that with a world audience is just wonderful."

I think we may have passed the tipping point where folks no longer find this unusual, but instead assume that it's just part of the landscape of higher education. And I, of course, would argue that it's part of the landscape of K-12 (or at least should be). Everything I chose to emphasize in italics above echoes what we've been talking about these last few years - now we need to figure out how to do it really, really well.