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Maureen C. Elliott Brain Cohort 2012-2013

Does changing the design of labs impact student motivation and achievement?

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About Me
Daughter, wife, teacher, dancer, runner. Mother to 5 bunnies and 3 cats and one little baby of our own on the way!!!! Chemistry and Environmental Science Teacher. Gettysburg and Wake Forest graduate. Awed by The Great Migration in the Massai Mara, newborn Kenyan cheetahs, Galapagos finches, rescued baby elephants in Nairobi, Colorado mountains and giant corals in the Indian Ocean.

CONTACT: mocmiller@gmail.com

Takeaways / Big Ideas
From my experience as a member of the EE Ford Brain Cohort, my brain (all puns intended!) is filled with a plethora of creative ideas to make learning more meaningful and effective for my students. I have incorporated small changes like stretch breaks every 20 minutes to the use of a multitude of exit tickets to wrap up a class period. I have learned so much from my colleagues and "stolen" ideas from each of them. I now have a greater understanding and appreciation that learning and retention are two very different ideas. To learn for just a few minutes is nothing compared to retaining it for a lifetime. I have learned that meaning is not inherent in content, but something that I need to create for my students to relate the content to their real lives. And most importantly of all, I have learned to recognize anxiety in my students and to find creative ways to alleviate the stress that can often inhibit true learning.

I sincerely value the use of action research in my own classroom to not only affirm best practices for my students but also to share what I have learned with my colleagues. The heart of the teaching profession lies within the cooperative, collegial atmosphere of fellow teachers.

AR Overview
As a science educator for thirteen years, I have always valued the integration of laboratory experiments in the science classroom. However, I often felt like this experience was lacking a greater meaning. I had hoped that challenging questions and strict grading would motivate students to gain insight into the connections between the content and its application. Unfortunately,though, this often created undue stress on many of my students and the learning I had hoped to occur was limited. So, I set forth to make changes to make this experience ultimately more meaningful while still maintaining accountability for learning.

AR Question
Does changing the design of labs impact student motivation and achievement?

AR Process
The first question that I hoped to answer was "how do my students learn best?" While traditional learning style inventories organize students into visual, auditory, and kinestetic learners, I wanted to gain a more in-depth perspective into my students' brains. Through my research, I found an inventory developed by [|Edutopia]based on Howard Gardner's research on multiple intelligences. We all know that students have preferences to ways to learn, but also that many students can learn in a multitude of fashions. I was shocked to learn that a significant majority of my students were Interpersonal Learners; they are learners that thrive on social interaction and work well together on projects. I need to take advantage of these strengths in the laboratory.

I applied the research results of Fisher & Frey to the structure of my laboratory sequence. Historically, students would receive an abbreviated pre-lab introduction in class, complete the lab and report, and receive a score based on point value (i.e. 11/15). Students were graded on both the accuracy and precision of their data as well as thoughtfulness and accuracy of conclusion. Limited time was spent on post-class analysis. According to the Fisher & Frey model, I was following a structure where I, the teacher, was taking responsibility for student learning. However, I neglected the most essential pieces of student responsibility. See chart below:



<span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">And so, I executed the following changes to the laboratory <span style="color: #c70f76; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: center;">to include both teacher and student responsibility toward learning.
 * <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">“[|Flipping]” the pre-lab FOCUS LESSON
 * <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">More focused analysis of data GUIDED
 * <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Grading - written feedback with performance score 1-4
 * <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Post-class Discussion and Analysis COLLABORATIVE
 * <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Lab Practical to Assess Learning INDEPENDENT

<span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">After each tweak, I requested written feedback from each of my students. By the second major iteration, I found that the majority of students, and more significantly the girls, were receptive to this process of learning.



<span style="color: #0fc7aa; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">AR Data Samples




<span style="color: #0fc7aa; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">AR Data Analysis
<span style="color: #38bc7f; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 210%;">What do students really enjoy about labs? <span style="color: #0000ff; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 27px; text-align: center;">What do students dislike about labs? <span style="color: #0005ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">After one iteration of change, what do students still struggle with? How are they engaged more?



<span style="color: #0fc7aa; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Student Voices on the New Lab Sequence and Motivation:

 * <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">I like how the new process encourages learning. With the old process I wouldn't have fun and would only focus on doing getting "the right answer" to the point where I wasn't focusing on learning anything, just getting a good grade. In my opinion, this new process is significantly better.
 * <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">I like that with the new process I don't feel pressure to get perfect data or worry about the exact right answer to a question, but instead I can focus on how the lab as a whole connects with what we're learning
 * <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">I feel motivated to stay engaged and do well on these labs because I know that the subject matter covered by our labs is liable to be on the test. In other words, although I may not be held immediately accountable for it, I realize that I will be at some point. As a result, I recognize the importance of actually understanding a lab rather than just going through the motions.

<span style="color: #0fc7aa; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">AR Conclusio
<span style="color: #0fc7aa; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: center;">ns <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">In summary, after a semester of assessing my student’s attitudes toward science labs and learning in general, I came to realize, much to my surprise, that most students held a very apprehensive attitude towards learning science. With a fixed mind-set, they were prisoners in their own minds, and the set-up I had for years was less than effective. Moving into the 2nd semester, I applied the research results of Howard Gardner and Fisher & Frey to develop effective scaffolding to gradually shift the responsibility of learning to my students so that they become “competent, independent learners.”1

<span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">I could not have been more pleased with the results of this year's research. Overall, students found their laboratory experience to be more engaging while decreasing pressure to "get the right answer." This change in attitude allowed for greater exploration and consequently, greater learning. One student even commented on how this new process has made her a "better student!" Students reflected that they now look forward to the "amazing examples of what [they] are learning!" After the second semester lab practical, students performed extraordinarily well, proving their in depth understanding of how to use the laboratory to assess chemical reactions. In this final assessment, their averages increased from 89.6% in the first semester to 93.1% in the second semester. While not a significant difference, it was still an improvement that came with an especially challenging cumulative assessment!

<span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">While most of my students fully embraced this change, there were some who felt like they were now swimming against the current. Labs were no longer graded in the traditional sense, so the external motivation was no longer a factor in their work ethic. To be honest, I still struggle with this piece and wish I had a magical answer on how to reach and motivate every student that I teach. I will continue to explore the question of how to best motivate students in the years to come. In the meantime, I feel a great sense of accomplishment knowing how significantly these laboratory changes have positively impacted student learning.

<span style="color: #e500ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Lit Review & Resources
<span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">Apple Distinguished Educators. (2013). Flipping the Classroom: The Why and the How. Retrieved February 7, 2013, from https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/ lipping-classroom-why-how/id589244188 <span style="color: #0fc7aa; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Camtasia ScreenCasting Software. (n.d.). Retrieved February 7, 2013, from http://camtasiasoftware.com/index.htm <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Edutopia (Ed.). (n.d.). What's Your Learning Style. Retrieved February 7, 2013, <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> from [] <span style="color: #0fc7aa; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">1Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2008). Better Learning through Structured Teaching. Danvers, MA: ASCD. <span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Gardner, H. (2011). The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books. <span style="color: #0fc7aa; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Souza, D. A. (2011). How the Brain Learns (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.



<span style="color: #e500ff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Reflections
<span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">I would like to thank all the members of the EE Ford Cohort, our mentors, Anna, Brandi, Shelley and Keisha, and Bob Ryshke for their guidance, support and feedback throughout this process. They have pushed us to deeply examine our own practices to find ways to make the classroom experience even more meaningful for our students. And an extra special thank you to Mark Labouchere for all of his guidance in the technological aspects of my project!

<span style="color: #c70f76; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">I am a better teacher today because of my experiences this year. Thank you, EE Ford, for making this possible. And thank you to all my colleagues for supporting me, not just tonight, but everyday of my career.