Summary Exercises: Students hate these!

…but I still don’t think they are entirely useless.

P.S. Am I doing this clickbait headline thing correctly yet?

P.P.S. the last time I posted, I promised weekly updates from my online teaching fellowship experience. Well, that didn’t happen. *laughs in retrospect.* It’s Monday, though, and I started this thing one time where I post a mini-tip on Mondays, so I’m going to just hop back on that train and ignore my recent pandemic-induced writer’s block.

So, what are summary exercises, and why do students hate them?

I stole this idea from someone on the internet. This was a long time ago, though, and I don’t remember who I should credit for this (sorry!). The original blog post writer I stole this idea from had the following basic recipe: Every day before class, she assigned her students a section of the book to read and write a summary. Then, they covered that section in class. Students submitted these summaries at the beginning of class, and I don’t remember if they were graded. I think even if they were, they constituted a small part of their overall grade.

From what I remember of the original post, her students really hated these at the beginning of the semester. It was so much extra work, and the type of work they don’t come into a math class expecting to do. However, by the end of the semester, they realized that writing these summaries helped them understand the lectures better, and the notes they made were invaluable when exams came around. Happy ending!

In Spring 2020, I wanted to implement something similar, but instead of having students read and write a summary before class, I wanted them to write one after. I worry about the flipped classroom approach in an intro-math class. Learning to read math is a skill, and we shouldn’t just assume that students have that skill down when they first enter a calculus 1 or 2 class. I am more open to the flipped classroom idea if you ask them to watch a video explaining math before class. Still, even in this version, you have to find a way to make sure they are actually following instructions. Anyway, thoughts on the flipped classroom should maybe go in a different blog post.

The way I implemented Summary Exercises was via Canvas. I set up assignments due at 11:59 PM on the day of class, after every class session. Students could enter summaries in a text box, or upload files (PDFs, scans, word docs, etc.). Almost none of the students went for the non-text box option, which surprised me. These assignments were graded for completion, but I encouraged them multiple times in the first few weeks to make them as detailed as possible. The more effort they put in at the beginning, the more it would help when midterms rolled around.

After the first midterm, I gave students their midterm evaluations, and a couple of students commented that they found the exercises “useless.” At this point, I had also gotten tired of them. At the start of the semester, students were just doing them to check a box, so they weren’t that good qualitatively. After I spent some time encouraging them to add more details (and gave them examples of what a good summary looks like — in retrospect, I should have done this at the start of the semester), the quality seemed to improve a lot for the next couple of weeks. 

By the middle of the term, however, students had realized that there wasn’t enough incentive to put effort into them (remember they were only being graded for completion) and so they had gone back to writing a sentence or two with not that much content. After the midterm evaluations, I seriously thought about getting rid of them altogether…

And then the pandemic hit. 

We had to move our instruction to a remote learning model with almost no time to plan. I taught the rest of the semester as live synchronous sessions via Zoom that I recorded and posted online. This gave me an idea: maybe the summary exercises could actually be useful in such a setting. If nothing else, they’d help me track whether students watched the recorded lectures and whether they were getting anything out of them. 

I changed the format of summary exercises to graded discussions on Canvas. After every class session, they still had an assignment to do (now at the start of the next class session instead of 11:59 PM), but instead of submitting their summary just to me, they were posting it in a Canvas discussion board. The discussion board was set up so that you had to post a response before you could see others’ replies. I figured that the prospect of other people reading your answers might motivate students to put more effort into them. I also made them graded for content, which just meant that I won’t give you a 100% if what you’d written was completely irrelevant or devoid of substance.

Well, if my final term evaluations are anything to go by, students hated this new arrangement. Here are some quotes directly pulled from the evaluations.

• Strengths: Quizzes and in class activites were extremely helpful in learning the course material Weaknesses: Summary exercises.

• Remove summary exercises. They do not fulfil the role they are set out to fill and cause unnecessary stress

• …feel that summary excercises were pointless and I never looked back at them

• Strengths: Explained all course material at a very reasonable pace. Did not rush anything. Answered all questions both in person and through emails. Very easily accessible to meet in her office if required Weaknesses: Summary exercises

I almost want to laugh at the intensity of this hatred, but I won’t. Also, I promise that this was NOT the case in my mid-term evaluations, otherwise I would have gotten rid of them altogether. Midterm evaluations were lukewarm, and had a “eh, I don’t hate them but don’t think they are useful” vibe (and that too only from 2 students!)

(Also full disclosure, most students didn’t comment on Summary Exercises at all. One student even said “Summary exercises and index card problems allowed me to go back and learn the broad topic of each class before a quiz or test,” in the end of term evaluation. So it wasn’t all terrible.)

The point is, students didn’t like them, but I thought they were useful for me in the strange times of pandemic teaching, because they helped me keep track of who was watching (and actually learning from) my recorded videos.

I wouldn’t trash the idea completely based on my Spring 2020 experience, but I am definitely looking for a different way to implement them in a future semester. If you’ve read this entire (not that mini-) post and have ideas and suggestions for me, please post them in the comments because I’m all ears!

Be safe, and I’ll see you with another mini-tip Monday on some future Monday. Or Sunday night. (Who knows, it’s 2020, could be Thursday. #Whatistime.)

Mini-tip Monday: Zoom Polls

Happy fourth week of online teaching, everyone! Can you believe we made it to four weeks? Today’s Mini-tip Monday is also about the move to remote learning. (See here and here for the previous posts in this series.)

If you’re new to my blog, let me remind you of my set-up. I am teaching Calculus II synchronously using Zoom, the now-famous web-conferencing service. I share my iPad’s screen and use notability to write while I lecture. I use Canvas to communicate with my students, post class recording and notes, and share any other resources.

The set-up has been working very well for me. On average, about two-thirds of my students are attending the class sessions live. The others are engaging via Canvas, and I haven’t had a student completely disappear yet. (I have had a couple of close calls, but reaching out to them has always resulted in them resurfacing. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my students can all make it through these chaotic times in good health and spirits.)

While I have adjusted reasonably well to teaching online, I really do miss being in a physical classroom. Apart from just missing the energy of a physical classroom, I miss being able to communicate quickly and effectively by virtue of being in the same space as my students. There are just some things that cannot be replicated in an online class, though not for lack of trying. One of the things I miss the most is the ability to get quick feedback from students when explaining a new topic. I do this in a face-to-face class by breaking my lecture up with straightforward problems that I ask them to solve on a pen and paper. I encourage them to talk to each other while attempting these problems, and I do a quick walk-around to glance at their work and gauge where they are. If needed, I pause and chat with the students who seem to be struggling, offering individual help. 

Sometimes I do the same thing before I introduce a new topic. I ask the students to solve a warm-up problem, something that nicely sets up the next section we are going to cover. (I will talk about warm-up problems more in a future Mini-Tip Monday.)

All of this seems impossible in an online class where I can’t glance at their work in real-time. While I haven’t found a way to completely replicate the ease of a physical classroom, one of the most effective tools I’ve used to get me close is the “Polling” option on Zoom.

I have taken the time to reframe the problems I’d usually ask students to solve in a class into multiple-choice questions. Obviously, this reframing would not work for every type of question. Still, when it does, it provides me with invaluable quick feedback that I had no other way of getting in an online class.

Let me explain how Polling works a little bit. You can set up polls you want to use in a class session ahead of time. I usually do this the night before. If you have a recurring meeting scheduled, you can add polls to the meeting at any time, and Zoom saves all of them. Here I will list three examples of questions that translate well to Zoom Polls.

Example 1

Topic: Trigonometric integrals.

Warm-up problem: Integrate sin^2(x) with respect to x.

Zoom Alternative: Which of the following methods would you use to integrate sin^2(x) with respect to x? 

Poll Options:  Integration by parts, u-substitution, a trigonometric identity

(Once students have answered this poll, I would ask them to take a few minutes and try to solve the problem using the method they picked. After a few minutes, I would rerun the poll, asking them to choose either the same or a different approach.)

Example 2

In-class problem: For what values of x does the series {insert some power series here, say with the interval of convergence [-1/2,1/2)} converge?

Zoom Alternative: For what values of x does the series {power series} converge?

Poll Options: (-1/2,1/2), [-1/2,1/2), [-1/2,1/2], (-1,1), I do not know.

(If anyone picks the last option, I would pause and ask them if they have a specific question.)

There are also some much simpler questions one could ask over Zoom. For example,

Zoom Poll: Does the series {insert series} converge or diverge?

Poll Options: Converges, Diverges.

Here’s one I used in class just today.

Zoom Poll: The following differential equation models the growth of a population P: dP/dt=8P(1000-P). If the current population is 200, is the population increasing or decreasing? 

Poll Options: Increasing, Decreasing.

While this approach has it’s imperfections, I have had a lot of success using it. In particular, I like it a lot better than the alternative that I’ve been considering: breakout rooms. Let me know in the comments of any strategies that you’ve developed to make your online lectures more interactive. I am always looking for ideas!

 

Mini-tip Monday: Running to-do lists

I’m back with another Mini-tip Monday, a series where I post a bite-sized piece of information or suggestion that has helped me streamline or improve my teaching. If you missed the one from last week, click here to read it.

For the next several weeks, the mini-tips will specifically be about moving to remote learning amid the Covid19 crisis. We will move to other topics once things go back to some semblance of normal.

This week’s mini-tip is about running to-do lists. 

Since moving our class online, a lot has inadvertently changed. Students were used to a weekly study routine that has had to be modified. I’ve tried not to jostle any of their deadlines drastically, e.g., homework is still due on Mondays, in-class quizzes that used to take place on Wednesdays have been converted to weekly Canvas quizzes, which still take place on Wednesdays, etc. My intention is to keep things as close to normal as possible while being as flexible and compassionate towards their individual circumstances as I can be.

It is a hard balance to strike, though. For example, we nixed a midterm that was supposed to take place right after spring break, since that would not have given them enough time to get used to taking their class online, etc. Emory extended their spring break for a week, which means that we had to rearrange content for the rest of the semester. 

To help students with this transition, I’ve decided to post a running to-do list on our Canvas homepage. I update it as I go during the week, and send out an email with all upcoming deadlines on Monday evenings. Here’s an example of what that email looked like as of Monday evening last week [I’ll add comments and explanations in square brackets, like so. The stuff in blue used to be links that I’ve removed for the blog post.]

"I thought it might help if I made a consolidated list of to-dos for you each week, just to make this transition easier. 

First, if you weren't present for today's synchronous class (and even if you were), please take a look at this page: March 30th, 2020. [links to Canvas page titled "March 30th, 2020. See my last blog post for details about how I'm using Canvas pages.] I have updated it with a link to the video-recording of the lecture, and a PDF file containing notes. 

Then, please complete today's summary exercise [links to the correct page on Canvas. More details about summary exercises in a future mini-tip Monday post!] if you haven't yet. 

This week's WebAssign [online homework] is due on today by 5:00 PM EST. [This is when WebAssign has always been due, and since it's always been online, I decided not to change the deadline.] Please make sure that you have completed it. Feel free to email me any questions. 

There will be a new WebAssign out tonight, which covers Sections 11.10 and 11.11 from your textbook. It will be due next Monday; please plan a time to work on it this week. 

Our weekly quiz will be released on Wednesday at 11 AM. It will available until Thursday at 11 AM. It covers 11.8 and 11.9 from your textbook.

Finally, please attend class (if you can, or watch the recorded video) on Wednesday and Friday, and submit the corresponding summary exercises.

Please let me know if you have any questions/comments or feedback. 
 
Stay safe, 
 
Maryam" 

On my Canvas homepage, that above email just translates to:

• Notes+Recording for Monday’s class: March 30th, 2020.
• Summary exercise for Monday, March 30th.
• WebAssign (due March 30, 5:00PM EST).
• Quiz on Wednesday, April 1st, 11 AM (Sections 11.8 and 11.9)
• Notes+Recording for Wednesday’s class: April 1st, 2020.
• Summary exercise for Wednesday, April 1st.
• Notes+Recording for Friday’s class: April 3rd, 2020.
• Summary exercise for Friday, April 3rd.

This way, they get a reminder on Mondays, but they also have a concise, frequently-updated running list that they can check any day of the week.

In a regular semester, I send students email reminders for any deadlines that they wouldn’t get an automatic reminder for. I’ve never thought of doing one big email with a consolidated to-do list for the whole week before, but after doing them for the past couple of weeks, I like the idea enough that I hope to continue doing this post-pandemic!

As always, please let me know in the comments if you have ideas for making this more efficient and effective. Thank you for reading this far!

Mini-tip Monday: Canvas Pages

I have decided to post a “mini-tip,” a bite-sized piece of information or suggestion that has helped me streamline or improve my teaching, on Mondays. For the next several weeks, these will specifically be about moving to remote learning amid the Covid19 crisis. The hope is that I can keep this going once things are back to normal.

Today’s mini-tip is about Canvas Pages. I have been using Zoom to deliver my lectures synchronously, and Canvas to communicate with my students otherwise. All homework, lecture notes, lecture videos, etc. are posted on Canvas. One consequence of moving online is that there is a whole flurry of information that needs to be communicated to students related to every class period, e.g., class recording, notes, any related hw due that day, summary exercises*, etc.

Even though I’m hosting synchronous classes, I am trying to post extra resources for students who cannot make it to synchronous lectures for various reasons (e.g., students who are in vastly different time-zones) and thus can’t take advantage of the option to interrupt me and ask questions in class.

All this being said, this means that I needed a way to provide them with all of this information in one, easily accessible, user-friendly place. Enter Canvas Pages!

I’ve set up a “Module” in Canvas called “Online Classes,” which contains a Canvas “Page” for each class session that I’ve taught. Here’s a visual of how that looks. The title for each Page is just the date of the lecture.

 

The green tick marks in front of the Pages indicate that these Pages are published.

Once you click on each Page, I have the following template set up. I fill in the relevant information after each class session.

In this class session, we will be talking about Section [section number]: [section title] from the textbook.

Topics and Learning Objectives:

[List of topics and Objectives]

Before you come to class:

[Readings they should do before class and/or problems they should work on before coming to class.]

Links to:

– Class Notes, Class Recording, Summary Exercise, any other resources.

Not every class session needs all of this information, but it is helpful to me to have a template, so I don’t miss anything. Here’s an example from last Monday.

I hope this is helpful for other people who are transitioning their classes to an online remote-learning format. Please let me know if you have any questions about my set up and/or any ideas to make it better!

 

Stay safe and sane!

*I will do a separate mini-tip Monday on Summary Exercises if you're curious.