Education 679: Blended Learning Experiences for Students in Urban Schools
Blended Learning Assessment Analysis
Summative Assessment
On this page, I will explore three blended learning assingments that build students' Media & Informational Literacy (MIL) and Information & Communication Technology (ICT) skills. Two of these lessons are from an A.P. Computer Science Principles class. The third assignment is from an A.P. Calculus class.
Assignment: Unit Two, Lab Four - Making Computers Do Math
Assignment Description: Unit Two of the BJC Computer Science Principles curriculum focuses on the concept of abstraction. Abstraction helps coders simplify their functions to make them easier to use and break apart. In Lab Four, students use abstraction to create a software library of mathematical functions. Students start with the MOD operator to determine whether the remainder of a number divided by another number is zero or one. Using the MOD operator, conditional statements, and Boolean operators, students build functions that determine if a number is divisible by another number and whether a number is even or odd. Throughout this lab, there is an emphasis on debugging and exporting functions from previous projects.
Algorithmic Thinking: Students understand how automation works and use algorithmic thinking to develop a sequence of steps to create and test automated solutions.
MIL/ICT Objective: By the end of this lesson, students will be able to explain the purpose of the MOD operator and how it can be used to build mathematical functions.
Student Work Evaluation: This student was successfully able to use the MOD operator to build functions that: determine if a number is divisible by another another, determine if a number is even, and determine the number of divisors that a number has. Using these functions, this student was successfully able to build more complex functions, such as calculating the average, minimum, and maximum of a data set.
Blended Learning Evaluation: In addition to supporting students’ knowledge of computer science principles, this assignment also builds students’ understanding of mathematical concepts. The concept of divisors and averages also appears in algebra and statistics courses. Building functions that calculate mathematical operations provides students with a different representation than what they would usually see in a traditional mathematical class.
Teaching Evaluation: The BJC curriculum is an inquiry-based curriculum that focuses on solving problems by using computer algorithms. It encourages students to be creative, explore why an algorithm works and what does not work, and discuss their findings with their classmates. However, this particular lab did not emphasize collaboration and peer discussion, which I would have liked to implement more in the future. This lab can be challenging because the algorithms build upon one another and increase in complexity, so if there is a problem with a simple algorithm, it will cause issues in the complex algorithms that are hard to solve. Peer discussion can help with the debugging process.
Assignment: Application Development Contest
Assignment Description: In this assignment, students had the option of working in a group of no more than four people, or working by themselves. If students worked in groups, they assigned themselves roles, such as CEO, note-taker, or public relations officer. Students were tasked with identifying a problem in their community and creating a computer application that could help solve this problem. The groups were required to present their application to the class. The group with the best application would present at a Harvey Mudd Introductory Computer Science class.
The winning application was developed by a group called The Lethal Company. Their application, Nutrimate, is a calorie-tracking application that helps users lose, maintain, or gain weight. Additionally, Nutrimate comes with a period tracker that assists female users in predicting their next period.
d. Explore real-world issues: Students build knowledge by actively exploring real-world issues and problems, developing ideas and theories, and pursuing answers and solutions.
1.7 Global Collaborator
c. Project teams: Students contribute constructively to project teams, assuming various roles and responsibilities to work effectively toward a common goal.
MIL/ICT Objective: By the end of this project, students will be able to collaborate with one another in order to identify real-world issues and potential solutions.
Student Work Evaluation: These students were able to identify a common problem in their community and a solution that could help solve this problem. They were able to create a comprehensive, user-friendly, and marketable application and successfully present this application to a large audience. These students exceeded expectations in terms of graphics, animations, and other visual supports. However, their application contained a few bugs that demonstrated a struggle with creating mathematical functions and/or lists.
Blended Learning Evaluation: In addition to developing students’ MIL/ICT skills, this project allowed for Linked Learning opportunities between computer science and other topics, such as mathematics, psychology, economics, and health. One issue with some students’ application was the citation of facts or statistics that were not properly cited and/or factually inaccurate. To further develop my student’s MIL/ICT skills, I plan to require my students to cite their sources and ensure that their sources are credible.
Teaching Evaluation: This assignment gave students a chance to showcase their creativity and connect the course material to their everyday lives. It relied strongly on student voice, peer collaboration, and individual responsibility. One modification to this assignment that I would make would be establishing the criteria for the winning application at the beginning of the project. This would give all students an equitable opportunity at winning this contest.
Assignment: Reflection for Methods of Area Approximation and Summations
Assignment Description: This was a supplemental activity given to my A.P. Calculus students after the two lessons on Riemann Sums and Summation Formulas. Students were asked to respond to the below prompts and post their answer on Schoology. This activity gave my students a chance to practice metacognition and provide feedback for my instruction. It also gave an opportunity to communicate with students one-on-one.
Prompt: Please respond with complete sentences. You may write or record (video or audio) your response.
Describe a concept you learned or were reminded of today.
What about today's lesson might be difficult for you moving forward?
How can I help you attain a better understanding in this course?
3.2 A (b) Express the limit of a Reimann sum in integral notation.
3.2 A (b) Express the limit of a Reimann sum in integral notation.
Content Objective: By the end of this lesson, students will be able to use Riemann Sums to estimate the definite integral of a function and Summation Formulas to calculate the sum of a sequence of numbers.
1.1a Learning Goals:
Students articulate and set personal learning goals, develop strategies leveraging technology to achieve them and reflect on the learning process itself to improve learning outcomes.
1.1c Feedback to Improve Practice:
Students use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice and to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways.
MIL/ICT Objective: By the end of this lesson, students will utilize online communication platforms to reflect on their learning process and provide feedback to their instructors.
Student Work Samples: Click to Expand
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Analysis
Student Work Evaluation: All students were able to successfully complete this reflection activity. Many students said that they learned about the relationship between a function’s concavity and its area approximation. The most common difficulty was memorizing the summation formulas. Students cited more examples, practice problems, and worksheets as ways to better understand the course content.
Blended Learning Evaluation: Using Schoology enhanced this supplemental activity because it made it more convenient for the students to submit their answers, and allowed the teachers to provide the students individualized feedback. It also allowed for teachers to easily identify common patterns among the students’ answers.
Teaching Evaluation: In order to meet the needs of all learners, I would have provided feedback to all the students instead of just some of them. Additionally, I noticed that none of my students used the optional formats (video or audio) to submit their answers. Encouraging students to use multiple means of communication and modeling this during class time may enhance their MIL/ICT skills.
