Before you even answer a poll in class… how many icons are on your screen? Does it look like this?
It shouldn’t. This is the Send Message mode. Theoretically it is for asking the instructor questions during polling – but no one uses it really, and the messages you send go into a weird report that they never really have a reason to look at, so they won’t be seen.
It should look like this:
To get out of Send Message mode… you must hit that back arrow in the lower left corner.
These are clips from many different educators talking about the use of open book student assessments.
…more significantly would allow students to trade information with each other throughout the test in ways which would be extremely difficult to monitor.
“With new technologies, new cognitive possibilities arise. Educators need to create new activities when new technologies are introduced into the classroom. If the calculator is used to add 2+2, it is the capacities of the calculator that are solving the problem; when calculation is “off-loaded” onto the calculator, the student is free to solve more complex problems.” – Jenkins, 2009
classes have moved away from traditional tests and towards project based and/or essay based exams.
Gamify the test?
exam duration is set to match the time necessary to answer the questions, without much slack.
demonstrate mastery of their art through practice
“for today’s graduates into the digital age, possession of knowledge is far less important than the acquisition, analysis, and synthesis of that knowledge”.
We use clickers with an LMS – namely Blackboard (9.1.110082.0).
I will update this as issues are resolved. Our classes started on 8/25/14.
Turning Technologies Open House
Turning Technologies, maker of the student response system, TurningPoint Cloud, will be here to demonstrate and discuss the new version of their software. Feel free to drop in at anytime.
8/27/14 – Melville Library Classroom A – 9:00am – 12:00pm
FAQ — when getting your participant list through TurningPoint Cloud – the server address at Stony Brook University is https://blackboard.stonybrook.edu
This Fall, Turning Technologies is changing their software to a cloud based registration system. This doesn’t change it’s functionality for it’s use in the classroom or class preparation, and the software is already available online here:
Attending the Summer Institute here on campus this week, primarily in the role of technology support and as a representative of TLT, was a really great experience. There were many informative presentations given to prime the participating faculty for the workshop work that they would be diving into, including one given by Jennifer Frederick from Yale University’s Center for Scientific Teaching. The possibly confusing point here, is that while these Summer Institute sessions are all aimed at the departments involved in STEM education, and so therefore you are addressing a room filled with Biologists, Physicists, Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, Chemists, Engineers, etc…. “scientific teaching’ is not about teaching science, but rather teaching using effective methods that have been proven using scientific methodology.
It makes a lot of sense. These are primarily researchers. Don’t stand in front of them and tell them what they are doing wrong in the classroom and how to change it. Show them what years of data have to say about different aspects and strategies in teaching. Show them where they can find out data about the schools that their students are coming from (a great reason to hold these events at an individual institution or region is how you can really drill down to local issues – did you know that no schools in the Bronx even offer Physics in high school? (other than a charter school that doesn’t count because the students that go to that school don’t actually live in the Bronx)).
As soon as studies and data started to be presented to the faculty participating, I could feel them losing up and the defences coming down. They became more comfortable and realized that they were home among their peers.
Participants:
Three tenets of scientific teaching were explored everyday.
Active Learning (or Teaching)
Diversity
Assessment
Common activity teaching techniques that were demonstrated and then used in the faculty presentations included:
Think – Pair – Share
Student Response Systems (traditional clickers and low tech response cubes)
POE (Predict Observe Explain)
Demonstrations
IMHO the event went very well and CESAME did a great job bring it to SBU. I hope everyone involved was happy with the outcomes and that the participants feel a bit revitalized the next time they are stepping into a classroom.
Here is a draft of a low tech clicker I am bring to the Summer Institute on Undergraduate STEM Education the week of July 7th.
When assembled, the students will have a cube that allows them to chose from 6 possible answers. The instructor in the room can easily see where the students are at by quickly scanning the colors being displayed. It is also possible to show student confidence by encouraging them to hold them high if they are very confident and lower if less so.
Students could use laptops, ipod touches, or smart phones in class to respond to questions from the instructor. If you keep the “poll” or quiz open, you can also collect answers asynchronously for online/flipped learning. The answers are dumped to a spreadsheet, so you have all the data for assessment, attendance and participation.
It’s the part about the metadata that you should think about in order to really understand the power that badges can have.
