Presenter: T. Garin Savage
Date: 15 November 2015

In the classes I teach at AcerPlacer, I have noticed a noticeable difference in the retention rates between those who take the class online and those who take the class in person.

In an attempt the remedy this situation, and after reviewing a few different classroom models, I have come up with a suggested solution.

Our current model for the online class structures is exactly like an in-person class through a computer. The students log on at a given class time to watch the two-hour lecture using Adobe Connect. This allows them to ask questions during the lecture, and for the teacher to ask questions of the class. After the lecture, they are assigned a 30 problem homework assignment to complete on their own, which they submit online.

Pros: The students are able to ask questions in real time as the teacher goes through the material.

Cons: Because our classrooms are set up so that only the teacher's webcam broadcasts any video or audio, students feel isolated in their studies. Our in-person classes with a maximum of eight students develop a camaraderie, a feeling that they are all in this together, and they encourage each other and work to not let the group down. Online students lack this connection and rarely communicate with each other. In addition, this isolation can cause students to feel uncomfortable asking the teacher for help if they start to get behind. Because no one ever responds to emails, the teacher would need to constantly text or call each student to maintain a connection, something that isn't always practical. Finally, the length of each lecture makes it very difficult for a student to review a single idea. If they do poorly on one topic of the assignment, they may not even recognize that, instead believing that they "just don't get this chapter." This may make it hard to improve a single component.

We often look at changing our classroom formula as a head-in-the-clouds idea; it might be nice, but it would never work. To find a possible new model, I evaluated several possible alternatives. Three in particular caught my eye. First I will cover the two that won't work, then I will cover the one that will.

First, I considered a completely asynchronous model. Here, there would be no lecture time at all. Instead, students would watch lecture recordings and do homework at their own pace. Additionally, the teacher could hold an optional lab that could be live to help those with questions. In addition, a forum could be set up so that the students could discuss the assignments.

Pros: It would allow students to go at their own pace. It would also allow for far more flexibility in the length of the videos.

Cons: The cons far outweigh the benefits for our program. First and foremost, it doesn't address any of the problems that I raised about our current model, and may actually exacerbate the feelings of isolation that many students have. Speaking from experience, when provided with a forum to use to help each other, no one in this course uses the forum. They would essentially be left almost entirely to their own devices. Considering our entire business model relies on our catching the people who are uncomfortable with math and want a teacher who can help them, this would not be smart move for us.

A flipped classroom is basically exactly what it sounds like as it "flips" the usual classroom model. Instead of using class time to lecture, students are instead assigned videos to watch, often as homework. Class time is instead used for working out problems based on the material while a teacher is there to help and ask questions.

Pros: Students are again allowed to move at their own pace. The scheduled class times would allow students to ask questions of the teacher in a more organized fashion than in an asynchronous class. There are also already a great deal of resources for this model that we could use (e.g., http://www.flippedmath.com/). Many teachers have had success with this style in the past, and using their experience would make the transition easier.

Cons: This classroom style interests me, and I was hoping to make it my recommendation, but I believe the cons simply make it incompatible with our course. The largest con is the difficulty of helping the students in our online setting. In a typical flipped classroom, the teacher is able to walk around and help individuals while everyone else continues at their own pace. However, the online setting of this class makes this idea very impractical. It is difficult enough in the online chat room to help the students when they are all on the same lesson, much less when they are all on different chapters. This would make the scheduled time very frustrating for most people as they hear material they have either mastered or have yet to learn, and attendance would almost certainly be low. While this model holds a lot of promise, it's simply not practical for our online offerings.

The difference between the blended classroom and the flipped classroom is relatively small, but it's a distinction that makes all the difference for us. In the blended model, lectures are still recorded on passed on to the students so that they can watch at their own pace. The main difference comes in how the class meetings are utilized. In a blended classroom, instruction still takes place in the classroom, and homework is still assigned for the students to do.

Pros: The lectures would not be two-hours in one sitting. Instead, they would be broken into more manageable chunks. This would make topics that the student struggles with easier to find for later review. This would also leave the synchronous class meeting for the covering of more advanced ideas, allowing students to ask questions live of the teacher on the hardest parts of the lesson.

Cons: While the problem of a lack of an esprit de corps persists in this model, I feel that it would be less pronounced than in our current model. This comes from the fact that the in person lectures could be far more interactive then they currently are, allowing the students to interact a little more with each other.

While blended classrooms come in many different styles, this is how I would suggest we implement it for our online class:

First, we would break the basic concepts into different topics and make a video for each topic. These videos combined would be no more than one hour. Some lectures would have several shorter videos when there are many different topics while others will have fewer longer lectures when there are only a couple of different ideas covered. Ideally, no individual video would be longer than 15 minutes. This would make it far easier to review a single topic. At least once during the lecture, the student will be given a problem and told to pause the video to solve it. When they resume to video, they will be able to see the teacher work the problem and see if they were able to get it right. While nothing forces the student to do this problem, most of them will want to make sure that they are doing it correctly.

After each topic video, they would be given a short quiz with no more than five questions from that topic that would need to be submitted online. Once they have submitted the work, the answers to the questions would be automatically shown (ideally with the correct work) so that they could get instant feedback on the material.

During the scheduled class period, the teacher could review more advanced problems based on the concepts learned in the lecture videos. Even better, because these class periods would be held after the quizzes are submitted, the teacher would be able to review which topics the students did understand and which they didn't. This would allow the instructor to revisit more strongly the topics that the students struggled with, explaining it differently if needed. This would make the classes far more applicable to the needs of the current class. These class periods would last for no more than one hour each, would make it easier for students to avoid scheduling conflicts.

Finally, after the class, the students would be given a longer homework assignment consisting of no more than 20 questions with a goal of about 10 questions. These questions would quickly review the topics covered in the video lectures, but the heavy focus would be on the more difficult problems covered in the synchronous class period. This would check not only the students long term retention of the material, but would also evaluate whether the teacher's attempts to clarify material that the quizzes suggested were not well understood were successful and whether the students were able to understand the higher level problems covered in the class period. The answers would not be shown to the student until after the homework is due in order to reduce student sharing of correct answers.

The total lecture time would be about the same at two hours. The total problems worked by the student would most likely increase from 30 to around 40. While this will increase grading times, it shouldn't do so precipitously.

The blended classroom would provide some obvious benefits. For example, the class periods would be able to more accurately crafted to the needs of the students. This is already easy to do when you can see all of your students in person and get instant feedback. However, it is much harder to judge student reaction online. This requires asking a lot of questions of the students, which often takes a long time to get all of the responses.

As mentioned earlier, this would fix the problem of the lecture length and would make the classes feel more personable because they would be crafted to the needs of the students. The only thing that might still be a problem would be the sense of community, but if the class periods were more interactive than the usual lecture, this problem might be resolved.

The new class model I propose would be difficult with our current tools. However, there are free tools available that could be utilized to meet this need.

The most important addition would be Edmodo. Edmodo would allow us to share the lecture videos, quizzes, and homework assignments in an easy fashion. They also include options for showing correct answers once the quiz has been completed. It also automatically collects the results into a grade book so that we could track its progress. It would be relatively simple to implement once the initial videos, quizzes, and homework assignments had been created. When you consider all of that functionality comes at no cost to the business or the student, it becomes a very attractive option.

Other likely tools that might need to be used are YouTube (for video hosting) and, possibly, a new method of holding the lecture so that the students can more easily and readily interact with each other.

Adobe Connect still might be able to fulfill that role, but it would require the purchase of additional tools to manage such as writing pads so that the teacher could share the computer screen while allowing student webcams to show faces.

Those in person may ask your questions now.

Those viewing online can find me on Twitter @GarinSavage. Feel free to send me your questions or suggestions there.