Flipped Geometry Survey Results

When I was a student teacher, my cooperating teacher taught me that I need to embrace my students and allow them to teach me how to be better. Because of that, every year of my teaching I have given my students at least one survey, if not more than one.

At the beginning of the fourth quarter in school year 2013-2014, I gave my Geometry students the following survey using Google Forms. I love Google Forms!! The survey is anonymous, but I told the students that I will be using these results to make decisions about next year so please be honest.

If you are curious here is the Survey:

Many of the results were not surprising, I will show them in the tables below.

I was curious how long it takes students to complete the notes. I commonly assign one or two videos as homework. So students can expect to have an average of 15 to 20 minutes per video. 

The amount of time students spent on one video seemed independent of their overall success in the class. Some students who struggle spend more time on the videos and some students spend more time, which help them do very well. The opposite is also true. Some strong students don't need to take a lot of time on notes and some weak students should spend more time.

From time to time I see students who are watching the video with earbuds in, but I notice that their earbuds are plugged into their music instead of the computer. So I was curious if this makes a difference.

This relationship wasn't very strong, but in general, students who get As and Bs in my class listen to the videos. It was more common among C, D, and F students that they listened to me less often.

Next I will move to one of the most important relationships to overall success in my class.

The relationship between watching videos before class and overall success was much stronger than I expected it to be. Every student who got an A or B in my class either Always watches the video or usually watches the video. Students who got Cs, Ds, or Fs came to class less frequently having watched the video and taken notes.

Students can ask themselves, do I want to act like an A or B student, or a C, D, or F student? Students who act like A or B students usually get As or Bs. And it starts with consistently coming to class prepared.

The next question is about our Daily Quiz. The quizzes I give are only 3 questions and students can use their notes. The questions are written so that if you watched the video and took good notes, all three questions should be easy, but if you haven't watched the video you may only get one correct.

I was very surprised to learn that 77% of my students felt that having a Daily Quiz is a motivation to take better notes. I realized that I spent longer assessing whether or not students watched the videos and took notes than the length of the notes. Meaning I was considering doing away with Daily Quizzes and just showing the video at the beginning of class. This survey taught me that students need more time than the length of the video to process it, and the daily quiz is a motivation to take better notes with more examples.

This is what I hoped would happen when I decided to give daily quizzes and I am very glad that this is what is happening.

We spend about 60 minutes each class period going over problems. I present a problem on the board and the students do the problem on individual white boards or on paper. After doing this for 60 most of the students feel that they have mastered the idea or are getting the hang of it.

There were two students who said "I usually feel just as confused as before we started." I looked very closely at the responses of these two students. These are also students who frequently didn't come to class having taken notes and these are students who "Only listen to Mr. Lewis if I don't understand." This is probably why they are confused.

Now if I separate the above data by whether or not they come to class having taken notes we see some powerful results:

The students who almost always have notes understand the material when they leave, while those who usually don't have notes may be getting the hang of it, but may be confused.

I was surprised that so many students were interested in optional problems. I don't know what I am going to do about this. The idea of it being optional makes me wonder if students would do it. Maybe make it extra credit or something. I need to think about this more.


Finally their third quarter grade separated by how frequently they come to class having taken notes.

If you almost always come to class having taken notes, you will probably get an A or a B. If you usually come to class having taken notes, then you will probably get a B or a C. If you usually don't come to class having taken notes, you will probably get a C or a D. I was shocked at how clear this data was.

One incredible thing about this relationship is whether of not you always come to class having taken notes is something that each student has control over. I think students feel that their grade is determined by how "good they are at math" and although this is true, they have control over how good they get at Geometry, by whether or not they always come to class having taken notes.


Statistics
The AP Statistics teacher in me needs to put a disclaimer. There is a "confounding variable" of each student's dedication to school and ability. Does taking notes make you get better grades? Or do students who get better grades always take notes because that is what they do as a student?

I don't want to imply any cause and effect relationships with this data because it was an observational study. But I think students will understand that if you come to class having watched the video and taken notes, you will be prepare for the practice, you will understand the practice, and then do better on assessments and therefore do better on the class overall.

This data was collected in my class, with my students, within my teaching model. These results can't be used in other Flipped math classes.


Comments or Questions?
If you have any comments about this data or the analysis, please comment below.

Homework in a Flipped Math Class?

I spend more time assessing if my students did notes than the length of the video(s).
This morning I had a realization. I spend more time assessing whether or not my students did notes (via a 3 Question Daily Quiz and me checking notes) than it would take to watch the video in class. For example it may take around 20 or 25 minutes to hand out Daily Quiz Papers, check each student's notes, and correct the Daily Quizzes. The videos are about 10 minutes long and I assign one or more commonly two for homework. This means that I could simply show the video during class and either gain 10 minutes or not lose any time at all.

This is powerful for many reasons:

•  I have seen several students watching the video while listening to music. So they aren't hearing my explanations and listening to my think-alound as I do one or two example problems.
• I have also seen other students who fly through the notes because they move the video scroll bar to where I have writing and pause it, then move the video scroll bar to where I have writing, ... or in other words copy from the video instead of watching and listening.

If we watched the video in class then I would know that they were both watching the video and listening to the video.

The downside is that many students watch the video, pause it to write notes, etc. like they are supposed to. I personally love the idea of my students taking notes for homework because they can take notes at their own pace. I would hate to change the nature of the class because a few students think the notes are more important than learning from the video. I know that the videos are available online, therefore they could go back and take better notes if they want, but I don't know if they would.


After this realization ...
If I do decide to simply watch the videos during class, I realized that the video doesn't have to come at the beginning of the class period. It could come somewhere in the learning cycle. Whenever I hear Ramsey Musallam (Twitter: @ramusallam) talk about the importance of exploration, learning cycles, and his explore-flip-apply model I completely agree but I struggle knowing how to do it in Geometry in my classroom. This could be one way that I can do it.

My class could:

1. Spend some time exploring a concept using a paper activity, web activity, NCTM Illuminations activity, etc ...
2. Then watch the video and taking notes
3. Do some practice activities using problems from the textbook, or completing some task to show mastery.
4. Synthesize their learning with a detailed summary.

No homework in a math class?
This will only work if I don't assign any homework at all. No matter what I assign for homework, I will want to go around the room and assess it. This generally takes 20 to 30 minutes of valuable class time. On the other hand if I limit our math learning to 85 minutes every other day, I wonder if this will be a detriment or not. Assigning homework is a great time to have more time on task, especially for my lower students. When I am considering making a change my first thought is "How will it impact my lower students?" My top students will be fine as long as I deliver content, but my low students need support.


Explore-Flip-Apply?
If my students are only working during class, then a struggle is created between exploring and applying. I want to keep my students together. I am afraid that I might spend too much time exploring or applying and not keep up with the pace of the class.

I really struggled last year with asynchronous learning, my top students went really fast and my lowest students went really slow. If I keep them all together then the top students help the lower students. This is especially important my classes because the difference between high students and low students is really wide (at a high school with no honors math classes in a class required for every student).


Well...
This blog post isn't as enlightening as I hoped it would be. But it has helped me think through some different possibilities that I need to keep thinking about.

If you have any suggestions or comments, please leave them below. I would love to read your thoughts.