Do Pandemic Teaching Practices Persist?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what educational practices will educational persist once the current crisis is over. This may well be a function of living and working in Singapore, where things are a bit further along the return to “normalcy” route than they are in many other places (which is NOT to suggest we are living some sort of totally non-COVID life over here). One of the things that I have brought back to this weird-but-in-person school year from the final-locked-down part of last year is my student choice structure in chemistry. To help students move through the end of the course last year, I built an “experience point (XP) collection game,” where students worked through material they chose to gather experience points which allowed them to challenge the end-of-unit summative assessment.

It was fine, particularly for the circumstances.

This year, I’m doing something similar, with a few modifications:

1. I’ve dropped the RPG-dressing on the choice structure. Instead, each unit has a choice board that is made available at the start of the unit, listing the choice items, XP values, work standards, and all of the other necessary information. Here is the current choice board deck, through Unit 1. (h/t to SlidesGo for the template)

2. Since students are in school, we are generally spending our class time together doing things, rather than just letting students use the time to pursue XP collection. This is not to say that there are not chunks of time when students can pursue “choice work” during our in-class sessions, only that I generally try to use that time for other things (ex. labs).

3. I’m pulling from a few different places for choice work. Unit 1 offers choices around: InfoDocs for course videos (technically NOT a choice, as it is a required thing, but it’s on the board and counts for XP), the Activities in the unit Application Packet, WebAssign, Explore Learning, Pivot Interactives.

4. I’ve tried to structure the submission of work to require effort, but not be overly arduous. Things that generate percentage scores (ex. WebAssign) have a work standard of 70% assigned to them, and they offer students multiple attempts per problem. Similarly, since I want things to flow to my email for workflow, students need to email me when they complete items in order for me to go and check them.

5. I didn’t want to tie choice work to a grade, so instead, I have connected it to learning behaviors. We have to tender two learning behavior scores (not grades— no impact on GPA) during the semester. I’ve set three levels for choice work: Concern- Less than 60% of XP for a unit is gathered by the due date (the class before the end-of-unit summative). Students in this bin can will affect their learning behavior scores AND they will need to get a “parent-waiver” signed in order to take the summative. Agreeable- More than 60% of XP for a unit is gathered by the due date. These students can take the summative without a waiver and their choice work will not impact their learning behavior grade. LEEB-Worthy- More than 90% of XP for a unit is gathered. These students qualify for a Limited Edition Expert Badge (aka LEEB) for the unit. I’m having these printed as durable stickers. Here’s the first unit’s LEEB (the unit is “Matter & Measurement”):

I’m interested to see how this project develops over the year. Thinking about future directions, I could see myself doing technical adjustments (ex. varying what is and is not true choice work during a unit, tweaking the XP values for different items) and also working to do more adaptive stuff (one obvious place is getting more artistic and student-expressive modalities into the choice boards for future units). However it develops, it is one thing I had never really thought of until distance-learning, and I think it will stick around for a good long while. At least I have the option!

What do you think you’ll still be doing once you return to teaching students in person? What are you looking forward to NOT doing anymore? Drop a line here, or @DavidKnuffke. Comments are also always welcome. Stay safe out there!