There are many aspects of Hawkes Learning that I could label as my favorite. Philosophically, I dig the mastery-based approach to math education. Practically, my students overwhelmingly report loving the preparation that creating a Practice Test allows them. But lately, I have been exploring student choice and rubric-based grading when utilizing the section and chapter projects that are embedded in the Hawkes Learning math curriculum.
Our institution offers four math pathways to satisfy the general education math requirement of various degree programs: Quantitative Reasoning, Elementary Statistics, Functions and Modeling, and Precalculus for Engineering/Computer Science. Since navigating to this structure approximately five years ago, our focus has been to provide relevant and practical mathematical scenarios for students in each pathway as related to their degree program and ultimately their career. Subsequently, I have integrated problem-based learning into my instruction and have appreciated the discourse that is an organic byproduct of this practice. Student engagement is apparent both online as students use a discussion board to reflect and give feedback on their problem-solving processes/solutions and also in the traditional face-to-face courses as classroom conversations abound, reflecting on the project scenarios.
With the recently adopted new edition of Viewing Life Mathematically, the addition of projects for each section got my instructional wheels turning. While I utilize some of these brief problem-solving scenarios to activate prior knowledge during instruction or a summative activity after teaching a particular section’s concepts, I started exploring student choice as I presented several varying projects for students to utilize at the end of each chapter to assess their understanding. I would draw from the Viewing Life Mathematically section and chapter projects but also from other Hawkes texts, and even created a few of my own!
The results of a quick and painless instructional shift were quite astounding. The completion rate of projects in both my online and face-to-face courses increased drastically as students were more engaged in the activity, given they had a chance to choose an assignment that more closely aligned with their interest or degree/career goals. Since this outcome was my intent, I was encouraged but not surprised by the result of integrating student choice into an instructional practice in place. What did come as an astonishment was the connection between peers that I witnessed as students began to share with their classmates regarding their prior knowledge on the topic and/or how they planned to use these skills later in their education or career. These discussions happened face-to-face in the classroom conversations and online on discussion boards. I am still unsure if this increase in meaningful dialogue was a byproduct of the students’ overall engagement in the activity or because they felt more autonomy in the coursework given they had a choice in which how to provide evidence of their knowledge of the chapters’ concepts. Either way, I was sold! Student choice in projects/performance assessments is the way to go!
Student choice in projects and performance assessments is the way to go!
The biggest challenge with these types of assignments, quite arguably though, would be the grading. It takes time, especially when you are differing the assignment, and can be difficult to grade objectively given there are sometimes multiple ways to approach the project. With the integration of student choice into this instructional practice, I decided that a rubric grading system was the most systematic way to evaluate students’ projects and provide constructive commentary. Although the practice itself varied by course modality, the use of a rubric grading system enabled me to efficiently provide meaningful feedback to students while objectively formulating a grade for their project.
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I introduced this practice in my face-to-face class by allowing students to self-assess their first project using the rubric I had created. Ironically, they were more critical than I probably would have been with their evaluation, but I did encourage students to revise their project and then regrade considering their own feedback they had provided on the rubric.
This activity not only increased students’ ownership in the product but also in our overall classroom procedure. I was able to gather valuable feedback from students on the rubric and made some revisions before utilizing it for the next project based on their observations.
In my online course, I garnered the courage to finally try out the rubric tool in our LMS. Several instructors in our Language Arts Division had been bragging about the tool’s capabilities, but I had not determined how to put it to use in my course yet. With a quick YouTube tutorial and about an hour’s worth of work manipulating the point scale, it was all set up! Although I had been giving students broad commentary on their overall project to this point, now I was able to give students specific feedback on the various aspects of the product they had uploaded. It was a much more efficient and purposeful way to grade the assignment once I had the rubric created. Since I can track if and when feedback is read, I was excited to see more students reading the feedback on their assignment, and many even reached out to me to answer the follow-up questions I had provided as a part of the feedback. Now, students were also making more connections with me as the instructor through the grading process after further engaging with their peers during the project itself.
As a part of our institution’s math pathways philosophy, our focus is to provide relevant situations that help students utilize the concepts they are being taught experientially. Through the implementation of problem-based scenarios and a structured, specific critique, students should walk away from their general education math courses with increased confidence in the math concepts acquired/refined but also in the fundamental life skills acquired as well.
About the Writer
Professor Emily Carpenter has been an educator for over 15 years with experience ranging from early childhood education to higher education. Most recently, she has had the privilege of teaching various math courses at Seminole State College (SSC) in rural Oklahoma where she also serves as the Transitional Math Coordinator. With a master’s degree from Oklahoma State University in special education, she is passionate about the exciting transition to corequisite classes as SSC continues to strive to provide rigor yet equity in their mathematics courses. Professor Carpenter serves as a helpful resource to new Hawkes instructors as a Hawkes Faculty Consultant. Learn more about Professor Carpenter here in her Hawkes Instructor Spotlight.
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