I just gave my hybrid myth class their midterm. I am not anticipating a happy grading period on this one. Throughout the midterm there was an abundance of chair/position shifting, long sighs, skyward looks, and forlorn glances my way. All clear signs of student unrest concerning the exam. Going into the exam I didn't think that they would fair any better than this but I still hoped that they would pull it together in between the review and the midterm. The review, which consists of games including Pictionary, Charades, and Jeopardy, was not a success for this class. Many students did not know some answers to the easier questions in the games and they did not approach the review with the confidence that my traditional lecture class section did.
I worry that I set my hybrid class up to fail-not literally, but my traditional lecture class is exceptional this semester and I wonder if any class was going to have a hard time competing with them. It doesn't help that I am trying to evaluate this teaching method at the same time. I don't give the same exam to both of my classes, though some of the questions and the essay were the same this term. I am not sure if these will be enough to judge the class by.
Also, at the start of the exam my there were 7 people present out of the 21 that there were supposed to be. Fewer than half showed up on time. Things need to change, I am just not sure what or how.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Friday, September 27, 2013
Observations and Acitivites-4 weeks of classes (9/6-9/27)
Overall, I am really happy with the way that my hybrid class is going. I have never had such good attendance in a Friday morning class. Granted at least 1/3 of my students show up late, but I won't really be too picky. Classes are always lively and fun despite the 8:40am roll taking. I think that I must have gotten really lucky with this group of students. I can't think that this is all because of something that I am doing. I just have a really good group.
The activities that I have set up are proving to be both a challenge and a lot of fun. I am starting to run out of ideas for activities and it isn't even half way through the semester. I think that some research is going to be required on my part. Thus far here is what we have done:
8/28- Write, Pair, Share "What is myth"
This activity wasn't really all that fun but the brainstorming and talking out of the ideas really helped to get their brains thinking. I wrote up all of their ideas on the board and we talked about the merits of each definition and why some didn't work out. I posted a picture of our brainstorm on D2L for the students to refer back to but I highly doubt that any of them will look at it.
9/6- Creation Comic and Telephone
One of my focuses in my class is to get students to not only remember the myths and think about their relevance and importance but to also identify them in art work. For that reason, I have my students do a lot of art related activities. The first was the Creation Comic. This week students read Hesiod's Theogony and the opening lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses that deal with Creation. In class students were charged with picking out the most important scenes (to their mind) from either Creation story and creating a comic strip. I found that several students did not do the reading so they were allowed to make up their own Creation story (a decision that I am regretting now that I realize several students are still not doing the reading). I wanted the comic strip to make them think about what was and was not important in the stories of creation and to help them to think about how to get ideas across in art. Overall, I think that it was very helpful and it was hilarious to grade.
The second part of the activity for the day was Telephone. In the end this turned out to be a failed experiment but it was a lot of fun while it was failing. The logistics of this activity were really what brought it down and looking back I would change a few things. Here is how it went the first time though: Starting out I numbered all of my students starting from one end and working around. Every student was instructed to have out a piece of paper to write notes on along with their name and number. I made up a story about a monster slaying hero, Shelby, who was deified after defeating the monster. I told this story to Student 1 as he wrote down notes. I did not repeat any part of the story. When we were done Student 1 had to tell the story as he remembered it to Student 2 with Student 2 taking notes and none of the story being repeated. I really wanted this to illustrate the changes that occur in oral tradition. The story moved through various people with different backgrounds so it should have changed with each telling just as myths with an oral tradition change over time and space. This did not work out so well. My students quickly lost my story so they made up their own to fill in the gaps. It eventually became not so much a story but a commentary on Hera's bitchiness and how she is hot. (Their words). I find it really interesting that they fell back on what they knew if Greek myth when they couldn't remember or understand the story that was told to them by the previous student. Next time I think that I should allow for a second repetition of the story.
9/13 Poseidon and Athena Casting
This might have been my favorite activity so far. Poseidon and Athena are really the first gods that we look at in depth and in order to get the students thinking about what we can of the deities' character I charged each person to cast Athena and Poseidon (as if in a movie) using either characters or real people and to justify their choices. Once they were done we came up with a list of attributes that we thought that Poseidon and Athena had to have and then we started making the lists. Their was a lot of rivalry and defense of particular choices over others and I think that in the end the students got a lot out of the experience. Even two weeks and four gods later they seem to have a really good grasp on the nature of these gods. The final contestants and winner along with the list of attributes were also posted, in pictures, on D2L. Our final vote was Wolverine, from X-men, for Poseidon and Mrs. Archer, from Archer, for Athena. I like the Poseidon choice but I am not sure that I can get behind Mrs. Archer.
9/20 Draw Artemis and Thesis statements
The draw Artemis activity felt like a bit of a cop-out to me. I probably should have come up with something better. This activity they just had to draw Artemis using all of the hints that artists generally throw in to help their audience identify what they are looking at. I got a lot of very funny pictures and one student was even brave enough to draw his on the board. Again, I think that it helps pull on a different part of the brain when students have to produce rather than recognize art. I guess I'll know at the midterm whether this worked.
The second half of the activity was to break up into pairs (I even made them move and sit next to someone new) and come up with a thesis statement of the gods of the day, Aphrodite and Artemis. Based on the groans and complaints, my students hated this. We wrote up all of the thesis statements on the board and went over them a bit. There were a lot of funny ones generally along the lines of "Artemis is a bitch." After all of the theses were on the board we came up with at least one piece of evidence to support each thesis. My personal spin on this was to not allow the group that came up with the thesis to provide the evidence. While my students did not like this activity I think that it was really good for them to think about the readings and lectures in a different way. I also posted a picture of the theses on the board on D2L.
9/27 Charades
I think that I might chalk today's class up to a vague failure. Now more than ever I really need to do some work on learning how to lead a class discussion that isn't just leading them to answers. Apollo and Dionysus, our divinities du jour, are such a cool contrasting pair and while I talked about them I didn't get a lot back from the class. This might have something to do with most of the class not watching the lectures due to some technical difficulties but I don't know. AND I am unhappy with them from not telling me that they couldn't watch the lectures. Why can't they send me an email so that I can do something to help them? Especially when today's activity was charades featuring all of the characters that we read and talked about for this week. It was really painful watching them flounder because they didn't remember character names and stories. Oy.
My final observation is that this class, while being very bright and participatory and lively, has the same problem as every other class that I have taught. Getting them to write papers every week is like pulling teeth.
The activities that I have set up are proving to be both a challenge and a lot of fun. I am starting to run out of ideas for activities and it isn't even half way through the semester. I think that some research is going to be required on my part. Thus far here is what we have done:
8/28- Write, Pair, Share "What is myth"
This activity wasn't really all that fun but the brainstorming and talking out of the ideas really helped to get their brains thinking. I wrote up all of their ideas on the board and we talked about the merits of each definition and why some didn't work out. I posted a picture of our brainstorm on D2L for the students to refer back to but I highly doubt that any of them will look at it.
9/6- Creation Comic and Telephone
One of my focuses in my class is to get students to not only remember the myths and think about their relevance and importance but to also identify them in art work. For that reason, I have my students do a lot of art related activities. The first was the Creation Comic. This week students read Hesiod's Theogony and the opening lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses that deal with Creation. In class students were charged with picking out the most important scenes (to their mind) from either Creation story and creating a comic strip. I found that several students did not do the reading so they were allowed to make up their own Creation story (a decision that I am regretting now that I realize several students are still not doing the reading). I wanted the comic strip to make them think about what was and was not important in the stories of creation and to help them to think about how to get ideas across in art. Overall, I think that it was very helpful and it was hilarious to grade.
The second part of the activity for the day was Telephone. In the end this turned out to be a failed experiment but it was a lot of fun while it was failing. The logistics of this activity were really what brought it down and looking back I would change a few things. Here is how it went the first time though: Starting out I numbered all of my students starting from one end and working around. Every student was instructed to have out a piece of paper to write notes on along with their name and number. I made up a story about a monster slaying hero, Shelby, who was deified after defeating the monster. I told this story to Student 1 as he wrote down notes. I did not repeat any part of the story. When we were done Student 1 had to tell the story as he remembered it to Student 2 with Student 2 taking notes and none of the story being repeated. I really wanted this to illustrate the changes that occur in oral tradition. The story moved through various people with different backgrounds so it should have changed with each telling just as myths with an oral tradition change over time and space. This did not work out so well. My students quickly lost my story so they made up their own to fill in the gaps. It eventually became not so much a story but a commentary on Hera's bitchiness and how she is hot. (Their words). I find it really interesting that they fell back on what they knew if Greek myth when they couldn't remember or understand the story that was told to them by the previous student. Next time I think that I should allow for a second repetition of the story.
9/13 Poseidon and Athena Casting
This might have been my favorite activity so far. Poseidon and Athena are really the first gods that we look at in depth and in order to get the students thinking about what we can of the deities' character I charged each person to cast Athena and Poseidon (as if in a movie) using either characters or real people and to justify their choices. Once they were done we came up with a list of attributes that we thought that Poseidon and Athena had to have and then we started making the lists. Their was a lot of rivalry and defense of particular choices over others and I think that in the end the students got a lot out of the experience. Even two weeks and four gods later they seem to have a really good grasp on the nature of these gods. The final contestants and winner along with the list of attributes were also posted, in pictures, on D2L. Our final vote was Wolverine, from X-men, for Poseidon and Mrs. Archer, from Archer, for Athena. I like the Poseidon choice but I am not sure that I can get behind Mrs. Archer.
9/20 Draw Artemis and Thesis statements
The draw Artemis activity felt like a bit of a cop-out to me. I probably should have come up with something better. This activity they just had to draw Artemis using all of the hints that artists generally throw in to help their audience identify what they are looking at. I got a lot of very funny pictures and one student was even brave enough to draw his on the board. Again, I think that it helps pull on a different part of the brain when students have to produce rather than recognize art. I guess I'll know at the midterm whether this worked.
The second half of the activity was to break up into pairs (I even made them move and sit next to someone new) and come up with a thesis statement of the gods of the day, Aphrodite and Artemis. Based on the groans and complaints, my students hated this. We wrote up all of the thesis statements on the board and went over them a bit. There were a lot of funny ones generally along the lines of "Artemis is a bitch." After all of the theses were on the board we came up with at least one piece of evidence to support each thesis. My personal spin on this was to not allow the group that came up with the thesis to provide the evidence. While my students did not like this activity I think that it was really good for them to think about the readings and lectures in a different way. I also posted a picture of the theses on the board on D2L.
9/27 Charades
I think that I might chalk today's class up to a vague failure. Now more than ever I really need to do some work on learning how to lead a class discussion that isn't just leading them to answers. Apollo and Dionysus, our divinities du jour, are such a cool contrasting pair and while I talked about them I didn't get a lot back from the class. This might have something to do with most of the class not watching the lectures due to some technical difficulties but I don't know. AND I am unhappy with them from not telling me that they couldn't watch the lectures. Why can't they send me an email so that I can do something to help them? Especially when today's activity was charades featuring all of the characters that we read and talked about for this week. It was really painful watching them flounder because they didn't remember character names and stories. Oy.
My final observation is that this class, while being very bright and participatory and lively, has the same problem as every other class that I have taught. Getting them to write papers every week is like pulling teeth.
Friday, September 20, 2013
Preparing for a flipped class: First class and recording my lectures
Clearly I am way behind on my postings. This post is for my first day of class 8/30/2013
I spent most of the summer worried about all of the things that I thought that I had to do for my hybrid course. I have read a lot of literature that says that it is a lot more work than a standard lecture class and I mostly stressed about how I wasn't getting that work done. In true me style, I prepped everything the week before the class was due to start and decided to wing it as I went along. I tend to not like to prepare way in advance because I like the flexibility to change things as I go. Mostly, this went for the planning of the classroom activities but I also stupidly applied it to the recording of my lectures. I probably should have taken care of those over the summer. But, live and learn.
The structure of my class is as follows:
I decided very early that my flipped class would include readings posted at the beginning of the semester that would be due every week. On Friday of each week I post the quiz that covers the readings for the following week. Students have until our class meeting on the following Friday to complete the online quiz. The quizzes should be easy for the students that completed the reading and are usually 10 multiple choice questions. Once the quiz is completed the online video lectures that I have recorded are released to the students. I use the software Camtasia Relay to record my powerpoints with my voice delivering the lecture as I click through the slides and point out important pieces of the images. When I was planning the lectures I originally decided that I did not want my face recorded, only the powerpoint and my voice. I quickly came to realize that my facial expressions really help me to not seem like such a goofball when I am speaking so I began recording my face too. After the students have done all of this they write a 500word, personal response to the reading. These are intended to be open-ended papers about whatever the student wants to write about as long as it expresses their views and is about the reading. On Friday morning the students come to class and we discuss the readings and do activities that should, hopefully, help them to get a better understanding of the topics that were covered that week.
The First Class:
Day one was really just syllabus day and a discussion on what myth is. I gave my long spiel and the course and my expectations, students introduced themselves and shared an interesting fact about themselves. It was really fun actually. My Hybrid class has a lot of dominant personalities that enjoy participating and throwing out random one-liner jokes that, usually, make everyone laugh. I can foresee that it might be difficult to keep these students reigned in but this is already a way easier class to work with than my usual uber-quiet Friday morning class.
---The activity for the day was very simple, I had the students write down with a partner a few words to define myth. After they did this I wrote them down on the board and we went over the definitions and I gave a brief lecture and how myth has been interpreted in the past and how we will look at it in class.
Overall this was a really great first day. I can tell that I am really going to enjoy this group of students.
I spent most of the summer worried about all of the things that I thought that I had to do for my hybrid course. I have read a lot of literature that says that it is a lot more work than a standard lecture class and I mostly stressed about how I wasn't getting that work done. In true me style, I prepped everything the week before the class was due to start and decided to wing it as I went along. I tend to not like to prepare way in advance because I like the flexibility to change things as I go. Mostly, this went for the planning of the classroom activities but I also stupidly applied it to the recording of my lectures. I probably should have taken care of those over the summer. But, live and learn.
The structure of my class is as follows:
I decided very early that my flipped class would include readings posted at the beginning of the semester that would be due every week. On Friday of each week I post the quiz that covers the readings for the following week. Students have until our class meeting on the following Friday to complete the online quiz. The quizzes should be easy for the students that completed the reading and are usually 10 multiple choice questions. Once the quiz is completed the online video lectures that I have recorded are released to the students. I use the software Camtasia Relay to record my powerpoints with my voice delivering the lecture as I click through the slides and point out important pieces of the images. When I was planning the lectures I originally decided that I did not want my face recorded, only the powerpoint and my voice. I quickly came to realize that my facial expressions really help me to not seem like such a goofball when I am speaking so I began recording my face too. After the students have done all of this they write a 500word, personal response to the reading. These are intended to be open-ended papers about whatever the student wants to write about as long as it expresses their views and is about the reading. On Friday morning the students come to class and we discuss the readings and do activities that should, hopefully, help them to get a better understanding of the topics that were covered that week.
The First Class:
Day one was really just syllabus day and a discussion on what myth is. I gave my long spiel and the course and my expectations, students introduced themselves and shared an interesting fact about themselves. It was really fun actually. My Hybrid class has a lot of dominant personalities that enjoy participating and throwing out random one-liner jokes that, usually, make everyone laugh. I can foresee that it might be difficult to keep these students reigned in but this is already a way easier class to work with than my usual uber-quiet Friday morning class.
---The activity for the day was very simple, I had the students write down with a partner a few words to define myth. After they did this I wrote them down on the board and we went over the definitions and I gave a brief lecture and how myth has been interpreted in the past and how we will look at it in class.
Overall this was a really great first day. I can tell that I am really going to enjoy this group of students.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Prepping for a flipped class: Inspiration and Trepidation
I had never heard of a "flipped" class until I went to a seminar at a different campus in my system called Blended Course Design with speaker, chemist, and all around entertaining guy, Dr. Ike Shibley from Penn State Berks. This seminar wasn't specifically about how to flip a class but instead on how to incorporate more technology into your class to help engage your students, it was the coolest thing that I had ever seen. I watched Dr. Shibley give the most entertaining seminar on a dreary, rainy January day and some part of my brain lit up and said, I could be like him. I want to be a teacher like him. He inspired such a desire to work harder and reach my students on a different level than just as a lecturer. At this seminar I had my first real opportunity to break out of my teaching closet and explore new and different ideas about how to teach and listen to all of the ways that other teachers were already breaking down the lecture-and-take-notes wall. When I went home that day I was buzzing from all of the ideas in my head. I still get excited thinking about it. The next week I sent an email to the head of my department and requested that one of my sections of mythology for Fall 2013 be taught as a hybrid class. As I sit at my desk today excitement isn't really the feeling that dominates when I think about my own flipped class. I think it is much closer to trepidation.
I would like to say that I spent a lot of time preparing how everything was going to work for my hybrid mythology class before the semester started last week, but that would be a lie. I did spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about what my students were going to do in class and how I could keep them interested enough to make the once per week trek to our classroom worth their while. Truth be told, I am still thinking and worrying about that. As a teacher I am inclined to think that all class sessions are of the utmost importance. That thinking follows nicely with the other lie that we tell ourselves that our students are not actual people but automatons who only do work for our class and are not adults that have families, jobs, and other classes.
I have the feeling that this might be even more difficult in my hybrid class where most of the learning takes place outside of the classroom. For any given day of class students have to do the readings, take a quiz, watch the lectures, and write a response the to reading (in that order) before they even set foot into our classroom. How can I impress on them that coming to class and discussing their ideas and doing some small activities are important? Especially when some of them, like me, commute 30 or so minutes to campus for a 75 minute class? I know that talking about the stories and themes in mythology will help cement them into a student's mind and will open them up to whole different world of interpretation than just my interpretation presented in the lectures. My goal is to be able to convince them of this also. Hopefully, I get a better turn out for our second day of class than the 2/3 that showed up to my other section yesterday. It makes me wonder if my class is too hard, if I am intimidating, or if students really just don't care. I am not sure which one would be the better truth.
I would like to say that I spent a lot of time preparing how everything was going to work for my hybrid mythology class before the semester started last week, but that would be a lie. I did spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about what my students were going to do in class and how I could keep them interested enough to make the once per week trek to our classroom worth their while. Truth be told, I am still thinking and worrying about that. As a teacher I am inclined to think that all class sessions are of the utmost importance. That thinking follows nicely with the other lie that we tell ourselves that our students are not actual people but automatons who only do work for our class and are not adults that have families, jobs, and other classes.
I have the feeling that this might be even more difficult in my hybrid class where most of the learning takes place outside of the classroom. For any given day of class students have to do the readings, take a quiz, watch the lectures, and write a response the to reading (in that order) before they even set foot into our classroom. How can I impress on them that coming to class and discussing their ideas and doing some small activities are important? Especially when some of them, like me, commute 30 or so minutes to campus for a 75 minute class? I know that talking about the stories and themes in mythology will help cement them into a student's mind and will open them up to whole different world of interpretation than just my interpretation presented in the lectures. My goal is to be able to convince them of this also. Hopefully, I get a better turn out for our second day of class than the 2/3 that showed up to my other section yesterday. It makes me wonder if my class is too hard, if I am intimidating, or if students really just don't care. I am not sure which one would be the better truth.
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