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Blended Learning Innovation
Reflection and Compilation
My focus for my implementation of rotational blended project-based learning will focus on 8th grade science, more specifically advanced 8th grade science learners in a rural school district just outside of the greater Houston area. In order to successfully give learners tools to be able to solve the authentic learning problem, students will move through digital and face-to-face lesson elements that will guide their knowledge and thinking about the content as they work to solve a real-world problem. Over the course of this program I have expanded upon my basic idea and added depth and my whole heart into making this a cohesive implementation project ready to be implemented fully.
Start at the Beginning
To understand my innovation project fully, you have to start at the beginning of this journey, because to be honest without the sometimes difficult lessons and experiences with COVA + CSLE which forced me to evaluate my own learning philosophy and beliefs, none of this would be possible. Before this program, I had never experienced this type of learning and I will never forget my learning paralysis I had to grow through when I was given complete freedom over what I would be creating, how I would document all my work and learning, and ownership of the learning. I was so afraid of choosing the "wrong" thing to base my project on for the next year I really struggled to get started. I can safely say without the help of some of the most supportive and patient professors I have ever learned from, I would still be in the very beginning stages of my personal growth and innovation planning journey.
Thanks to the input and guidance I have received as I worked on perfecting and tweaking my original innovation plan I have created something that I am so proud of and passionate about it has taken on a life of its own. The COVA + CSLE approach paired with a growth mindset made this possible by continually pushing me just a little more outside of my comfort zone to add another layer of depth and substance to my innovation plan. Building in a reflection component to the learning process after every major step helped give me perspective and a chance to acknowledge just how far I had come after that struggle period. The reflection helped prevented burn out and overwhelm from the discomfort of being pushed out of my comfort zone at the beginning. Over time in this program I acclimated to this style of learning and that is when I started thriving and became fully comfortable with being uncomfortable with new challenges in life.
The learning approaches have radically changed me in all facets of my life including my personal, professional, educational, and even parenting. I feel that this program's biggest impact in my life has been that all the potential I have had has finally been unlocked and I no longer feel like I am the prime patient for imposter syndrome anymore. I have become comfortable in leadership roles, which I never thought possible. I have come to realize that leadership is not knowing everything or being arrogant enough to stand in the face of adversity and not back down, while that is a minor component, humility, relationship building abilities, and interpersonal skills are much more important tools for success of an effective leader.
The Future of COVA and CSLE
The more I learned about leadership and creating change, the more passionate I became about actually implementing the innovation plan I came up with at the beginning of the program, the more I advocated for my students and the more I pushed to implement my innovation plan. It was recognized by others and I was put into a leadership position within my team and on my campus. I have implemented COVA in my own classroom this year in my new role as the advanced science teacher and I have seen huge improvements on my students’ academic performance and their personal attitudes and ideologies about learning.
It was a struggle at the beginning as many students just wanted to check boxes and memorize facts, so I definitely learned a lot about how I need to better facilitate project-based learning at the beginning of the year to help with the anxiety of the process. I am going to incorporate the use of examples in which I show a finished product of another student coupled with some round table discussions that I believe will "hook" students in the content and ignite their curiosity or passion for the topic that can then be built upon to create the basis of their project. The hardest part both personally and from what I have observed is getting the original idea that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. Adding more resources and support at this stage will make all the difference, I believe.
Through my own changes in perspective of learning and starting the process of changing from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset I have noticed that I am passing on this type of thinking to my students naturally, because they see me modeling this type of behavior and thinking on a daily basis. My students have seen me take their advice about things that have not really worked in the classroom and then I made changes and made things work better for everyone. I have embraced that I constantly need to learn and grow and my students have also done that. I have seen much more positive interactions and just an overall boost in the positivity of our classroom culture.
I am hoping that over time, I can win my colleagues over to a blended learning environment that promotes COVA and the growth mindset, however, that is not proving to be an easy task. Many educators are so caught up in their whirlwinds that even mentioning changing the way they teach causes them to shut down. They don’t want to change the way they are teaching because it sounds like too much work and they are already struggling with the impossibly long to do list they are faced with. I am hoping that as I win people over and they start seeing positive changes, they will pass the word along and change to this type of teaching and learning philosophy will change across campus with a grassroots approach. Another problem we are having is dealing with issues with cybersecurity and our internet being attacked/at risk. As a result many colleagues that were already not comfortable using technology have lost faith in its reliability and effectiveness, which is going to make adopting COVA approaches more difficult for the foreseeable future.
All I can do is continue growing on my own blended learning and growth mindset journey and hope that all the positive things I am seeing will win over my colleagues. I truly believe that COVA is the way to win over our students that are sick of school because they are tired of feeling like they are failing year after year and believe that their effort and time is wasted at school because they will never use the information in their real life. COVA and CSLE are just one of those things in life that you have to experience for yourself to understand it. I know the real key to success of COVA and CSLE lies in this approach's ability to give learning a true purpose which allows students to become more engaged and willing to think critically to try to understand real-world issues related to our science content. We aren't just throwing facts at our students we are igniting passions and unlocking potential that is stored within them, which will last a lifetime.
I invite you to continue reading about my blended learning initiative by exploring the links to my other work below and reading about my innovation planning journey as I reflect on this program and my growth throughout it.
Rotational Blended Project Based Learning Initiative
For more information about implementation, examples of units, research that lead to initiative development, or theories driving this initiative please see the pages below.
Behind the Scenes:
Planning Process for Effective Design of the Digital Learning Environment
Teacher Becomes a Facilitator for Student-Led Learning
Since this style of learning is only successful when students are given freedom to control their own learning through choice and voice, these units will be incredibly student lead and student focused. My job in the classroom will be only to facilitate learning and guide students through the design process as they need help or guidance in their projects/solutions to real-world issues or applications of the content/standards that are being taught. As a result of project-based learning and independent research being a driving force behind the learning of each unit, students will have a lot of choice and therefore ownership of their learning.
Deeper Learning and Applications
By allowing a real-world project or problem to be central to every learning unit, all assignments will build toward a final project in which students will self reflect throughout the process ending in a final composition assignment in which students reflect on the learning process and grade themselves (a self-assessment rubric will be given) and have to explain why they have chosen to assign their grade and give proof that they have in fact, earned the grade they assigned. Feedforward opportunities will also be embedded within these projects as students will be grouped by their interests/project themes/types and they will get some time to share ideas and collaborate on certain parts of the projects. Students will then take these ideas and make corrections to their own projects/designs. I will also be breaking the assignment into smaller portions that I will grade and give feedforward to each student so that they can choose to make the changes or edits needed. By design, each unit will push students to the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy and force each learner to analyze data or research, critique their own and others’ work, and create something that demonstrates clear understanding of the content and originality of ideas applied to the problem.
Outcome Based Focused, Standards-Based Embedded
While the learners will be participating in outcome-based learning within these blended project-based learning modules/units, there will be a number of standards-based assignments embedded into both the digital and face-to-face activities as required by my district and administrators. Unfortunately, standardized tests and standardized data is all TEA cares about, so we are bound to those rules and standards-based assignments are a necessary component to my lessons at this point.
Chemistry Unit Outline
In this 8 week eighth grade chemistry unit students will be investigating acids and bases, classification of matter, counting atoms and balancing equations, and properties of water in order to complete a culminating project in which they will be assigning their grades to themselves and justifying their grades in a written self reflection activity. The culminating project will test students' chemistry knowledge and forces them to apply their knowledge in order to create a recipe and eventually a brand with their peers. Students will choose the format of their project and will have almost complete control of what the final product looks like as long as they have a well-researched recipe that includes the chemical formulas of each ingredient as well as the total amounts of each type of atom they will need in order to produce their snack, food item, or beverage.
Shared Control of Learning
Due to the standards-based learning components that are required in my district due to TEA's standardized STAAR test, direct instruction and traditional assessment will have to be teacher controlled. However, every assignment and activity gives students information or skills that will then be used to build towards an authentic learning experience that is individual and unique to each learner and student-led. Thus, students and teachers share control of the learning and take turns leading throughout the lesson/unit cycle.
Instructional Design Models
I will be using the Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction, Merrill’s Principles of Instruction, and ADDIE models for the implementation of my blended learning units. I think that Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction will work best for units and modules that are designed for students due to the compatibility of TEKS and standards-based assessment that is required, while Merrill’s will be most useful when developing professional learning for staff members’ learning.
Chemistry Unit Design Map
Building on the 3-colum learning activities alignment adapted from Fink's Taxonomy, the chemistry unit can be broken down by the 9 Event's of Instruction. An example for the 8th grade blended project-based learning chemistry unit is linked below.
Design Process Influence
I am fortunate to work in a district that does not have many requirements or restrictions when it comes to lesson planning other than collecting standardized test data on students regularly throughout the year and of course, follow the TEKS. The TEKS are what I would consider my institutional document that influences my lesson outcome goals and my direct instruction activities. This year is a transition year as TEA has implemented new standards that need to be taught. As a result the side-by-side comparison of TEKS is very important.
Balancing of/for/as Learning
In this unit assessments and quizzes are given weekly as assessment of learning as these will most directly correlate with standardized testing requirements. Assessment for opportunities such as TeacherMade activities, PIxelArt activities, and EdPuzzle Activities allow students to self-check their work before turning it in for grading, which allows them to revisit and check over their work if they didn't get it correct the first time. Finally, the assessment as opportunity is throughout the project at the end of the unit. Students will self-reflect on their work and ideas and at the end will be asked to grade themselves and prove how they have earned that grade.
Welcome
to Blended Chemistry
My blended learning unit was designed with students at the center of everything. This unit utilizes technology and blended learning to personalize learning for each learner as they progress through the unit activities and the culminating project-based learning opportunity. Click below to join my Google Classroom and begin learning the wonders of chemistry as one of my Science Superstars!
You must use a Google account that is not linked to a school district. Due to most districts privacy and data protection settings you will be unable to open the classroom links and documents.
Course Usability
WWJH Trials
I am very fortunate to work at a campus that is full of innovative, kind individuals that were incredibly excited to not only test out my blended learning unit, they made time to sit down and talk to me about their experiences and provide feedback through a Google Form. As a result of such a positive campus culture and my colleague's helpful spirits, I was able to obtain valuable feedback from the most important stakeholders. I know that the methods used appeal to my students' interests as I have gotten informal feedback from them as I implemented all of this in my own classroom. It was essential to understand where other educators would have pitfalls in implementing blended learning in their classes.
From feedback I learned that these blended learning units were very user friendly and the educators in my focus group were excited by the possibilities they saw. The one major issue that my focus group pointed out was the lack of time to compile resources and make the blended learning units. Lesson planning and building resources and activities is very time consuming, so I know these are valid points that were brought up, especially those that are not as technologically savvy.
Moving forward I am looking into ways that I can help alleviate the burden of time to create units such as this one. I am thinking of an idea of having templates or working with Instructional and Curriculum leadership to create a database of technology sites and tools that can be used to create engaging blended learning lessons. My stakeholders seemed to be very interested in this idea and did think that it would make implementation of blended learning lessons and units less daunting. Once a unit or lesson is created, it can be archived and reused for future use as the lesson or topic is retaught to future students.
By choosing to use Google Classroom to build the blended learning units, I was able to keep consistency in what our staff and students are used to seeing and navigating within classes and training sessions. Our district primarily uses Google products and our LMS is Google Classroom, so using this platform seemed like the best option because students would not need extensive lessons taught about navigation of the system and where to find their work and resources. My stakeholders reported that the units were easy to understand and they had no problems finding any resources or completing activities embedded in the learning units.
During the testing of my unit from stakeholders, I realized that there were some technology literacy skills that I took for granted that needed to be addressed. For example, a few of my assignments instructed students to add their slides presentation to the Google assignment. Many of my stakeholders reported that they did not know how to do this, so I had to record a how-to video to help with this issue. After correcting that and adding more tech literacy tutorials and instructions, usability of my course increased significantly. In fact, two of my stakeholders asked for permission to post my videos explaining how to utilize Google slides and classroom effectively with their students. I of course, let them do so and sent the videos to them that could be shared directly in their Google Classrooms. Both stakeholders later told me that it helped them so much with a lesson extension project they had their students complete.
