Textbook experiment

For my history class this fall I am using flatworldknowledge.com to create a textbook for students that is free to read online. Students can purchase it in ebook, PDF, and hard copy if they wish. I liked the book well enough to use it and made a few changes, especially removing the chapters that cover time periods outside the scope of our class.

I hope that the decision to save students money will benefit them.

Topic rankings and grades

In my history class I ask students to rank the topics a class covers three times: on the first day, at the midterm, and on the last day of class. I wanted to see if the rate of change for students was correlated at all with their course grades. For this exercise I did not look at the first ranking, as 23 of the 40 who were there chose the option "I don't know enough yet."

My spring 2012 class was on U.S. history from 1945 to the present, and I asked the class to rank the seven decades we covered ('40s through the '00s). A total of 27 students ranked all seven decades on both the midterm and at the end of class, and I divided them into three groups:

1. Minor changes (from 0 to 3 topic rankings changed)
   The 7 who were in this group had a GPA of 3.14.
2. Moderage changes (4 or 5 topic rankings changed)
   The 11 who were in this group had a GPA of 2.55.
3. Major changes (6 or all 7 topic rankings changed)
   The 9 who were in this group had a GPA of 2.11.

So what do my numbers mean? Maybe the students who already know their history can spend their class time focused on doing well, whereas the others are figuring out what they feel is important and not as concentrated on assignments. This question I am very interested in examining again.

Grades and handing in tests

Whenever I have taken an in-class exam I always wondered if there was a difference in the exam grade between those who turned in the test immediately and those who took their time. At various times in my student career I have had desperate exams and ones I felt better about, and I could never figure out for me if completing a test earlier or later was better. Now that I am a professor I can see if there is any effect on my students.

Permission numbers and grades

How do students who add a class via a permission number do compared to those who were enrolled on the first day of class? In my face-to-face classes, students do not receive a permission number from me until after the class starts. Students are dropped when they miss a certain number of class sessions. On my online classes, students receive a permission number from me via email once they are available to me. I do not hold a face-to-face orientation.

Time period for short answers

Remind students to provide a time period when they identify a term on an exam. Too many students did not demonstrate some awareness of when an event occurred or the time period of a trend and lost points because of that.

Quiz score and time spent on quiz

I am disappointed at how my students are doing on their reading quizzes this semester. I use the quizzes to motivate them to get the reading done before we meet in class, as I want them to have a broad familiarity with the chapter before I lecture or we do a group activity or watch a video that is more focused. Each quiz has 10 questions that I wrote, and I tried to make some questions easy and some questions that required some critical thinking.

The average score did not change when I increased the time limit after the first three quizzes:

Quiz	Time Limit	Attempts	Average
1	10 mins.	31	62.9%
2	10 mins.	43	48.8%
3	10 mins.	41	47.8%
4	20 mins.	41	55.6%
5	20 mins.	37	56.8%
6	20 mins.	34	48.8%
7	20 mins.	35	54.6%

Quiz attempts with a 10-minute limit averaged 53.17% and those with a 20-minute limit averaged 53.95%.

Then I thought I might look at how much time each student spent on the quiz and see if I could correlate that with a score but I discovered nothing interesting there. I had to do some heavy data massaging (create a report in D2L that included the time per attempt and then use Word and Excel to strip out all of the questions and answers for each attempt), and I discovered the following for chapter 1:

Score	Count	Average Time
8	5	6.2 mins.
7	8	6 mins.
6	7	6.4 mins.
5	8	6.6 mins.

One student each scored 3 and 4 points on the quiz.

Better oral history

After reading the first half of the oral history research papers my students did I realize I need to structure the assignment better. About 80% of the sources they use are not primary (except the interview). The stories are interesting and at times touching, so they seem able to find reliable informants. Their other sources tend to me the textbook and/or web sites and material published recently. For the future I need some additional guidelines:

• Pick the last date for an event, maybe five or six years ago
• Approve the informant (use this to find out what the connection is between the informant and the event)
• Have an assignment focused on finding an appropriate primary source

For one class a few years ago I made each step in writing a paper a separate assignment (topic, research, thesis, outline, final draft); I might have to do that again.

Individual study guides for final exam

On the final exam I have a comprehensive essay question, and throughout the semester I had students do some work in class and hand it in to me. It was solely for the purpose of role taking, but the questions were related to in-class activities. For the final exam I returned a packet of each student's handwritten work.

So far so good, but since several of the activities were group ones and each group turned in a single sheet of paper, I ended up having to photocopy many of the papers several times. It took a little while and I am not sure how much benefit the students got, so for next semester I need to find a more efficient way to develop a learning portfolio from in-class activities.

Discussion extra credit

For the next time, the discussion extra credit assignment should be modified so that a student can earn up to 20 points for writing two quality responses to a classmate (10 points each) and the original author earns 1 point but there is no limit to the amont of reflected glory that the original author can earn.

Topic rankings at midterm

At our first meeting I asked students in my history class what they felt was the most important decade during the time period covered by our class (1945 - present). Here are those results:

• Seven mentioned the 1960s
• Six voted for the 1940s and for the 2000s
• Four selected the 1970s
• Twenty-three selected the check box for "I don't know enough yet"

I also asked what they felt was the most important event of our time period: 

• Seven voted for the terroritst attacks on 11 September 2001 and a combination of "economy" and "recession"
• Five voted for the end of World War 2 (I included those who wrote "end of war")
• Earning two mentions each were the Cuban missile crisis, civil rights, the atomic bomb, and women's rights

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On the midterm there were similar questions:

• Eighteen said the 1960s were the most important decade
• Eleven mentioned the 1940s
• Three wrote the 2000s
• Two picked the 1950s and one the 1970s

And for the reasons they wrote that their top decade was the most important:

• The civil rights movement (including the Civil Rights Act of 1964) was mentioned fifteen times
• Ten mentioned World War 2
• Six mentioned the Vietnam war
• Three mentioned the women's movement, ending the Great Depression, the Cuban missile crisis, and the atomic bomb
• Two mentioned women's efforts during World War 2, President Kennedy's election, President Kennedy's assassination, the cold war, the Bay of Pigs, and the September 11 attacks
• Earning one mention each were Watergate, the United Nations, technology, OPEC, the election of President Obama, music in the 1950s, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and "calm" in the 1950s

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Since I lectured on Vietnam just before the midterm, it makes sense that some of the later decades dropped in importance. I will ask students the last class meeting before the final exam to do this again, and on the final I will ask them why their ranking changed. That will mean individualizing the final exam but should result in a nice exercise in reflection.

Live feedback

I am using twitter and SMS in my history course this semester. What I do is tell students to tweet or text their questions at any time, and periodically I break and check what has been written. I also sometimes ask everyone to answer a question (e.g., what was the muddiest point). I tell them a hash tag for their tweets and I use Google Voice for the SMS. I check with my iPhone and do not use the computer connected to the projector. I also send out tweets once in a while with those hash tags in case any of my students are following. I do not require students to do either, and so I would not rely on either for roll or awarding points. There is also an instant messaging tool inside D2L, but I would limit the tools that students use as that reduces the number of places you have to check. It is possible for SMS messages sent to google to be forwarded as emails to any account .

Evidence of Outcome Achievement and Future Work

One of the assignments in my history class asks students to do a close analysis of an individual document. For those students who clearly excel (earn an A grade or better), I will try something this semester and let them skip  the remaining assignments in this category with a C grade. I wonder how many will take up the offer not to do the later work.

Frustrating Grading Rubric

Tonight I discovered that the grading rubric when using custom points counts as points possible the sum of the highest level of each criteria, which means that I have to create a level with the perfect score possible (maybe the "A range" instead of "A" as its label) so that the points calculate correctly. I was happy that the latest update to Desire2Learn's software finally allowed editing the feedback and points of the rubric grade.

Based on a lack of comment on this from students last semester (when I used the rubric with its cannot-be-edited flaw), I think it might be better just to write a grade for each of the criteria (they already have the rubric) and add additional comments as necessary.

Attendance and grading beyond the drop limit

My face-to-face history class meets twice a week for 30 times this semester, and I tell students in the syllabus that a fourth no-show means I will drop them from the class. However, there is a date when the only transcript option for students who get dropped is a W grade, which counts as one of their three attempts at this class. So what is the point of dropping students after that date if they can stay in the class, achieve its learning outcomes, and earn a passing grade?

I give points for attendance in the belief that presence and learning are correlated. If 70% of the points possible is required to pass the class, then at least 70% attendance is required to pass. With 1,000 points possible overall, then the attendance penalty should be greater than 300 points once the student has exceeded nine absences.

A simple progression does the trick:

• Perfect attendance = 120 points
• Four absences = -4 points each or -16 total penalty
  If the fourth absence occurs before the drop-without-notation date, I drop the student.
• The fifth absence = -8 points (-24 total penalty)
• Sixth = -16 (-40)
• Seventh = -32 (-72)
• Eighth = -64  (-136)
• Ninth = -128  (-264)
• Tenth = -256 (-520)

If a student misses class exactly nine times, the points for attendance will be -144. A tenth absence drops that to -400. Even if they earn all 87 points of extra credit, those students will have a maximum point total of 687 and therefore not pass the class.

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This also works with a class that meets once a week. In fall 2011 I awarded 10 points at each of 13 meetings and also had 1,000 total points possible in the class. Three was the limit then, but it should have been two and the attendance penalty should be greater than 300 points once the student has exceeded four absences:

• Perfect attendance = 130 points
• Three absences = -10 points each or -30 total penalty
  If the third absence occurs before the drop-without-notation date, I drop the student.
• The fourth absence = - 260 points (-290 total penalty)
• The fifth absence = -390 (-650)

If a student misses class exactly four times, the points for attendance will be -160. A fifth absence drops that to -520.