Symbaloo Self-Paced Learning Survey Results & Reflections

I’m calling this a MAJOR win.  Only 15 students said that they really didn’t like it.  The overwhelming majority loved it.  I’m sad for those students that didn’t like it and will try to maybe work with them in small group settings the next time we do this.

Better yet, an even smaller group felt like they didn’t feel like they performed that well at learning the new material on their own.  I honestly feel like this number could have been a little higher based on what I saw.  Pacing was an issue and is something that I’m going to be addressing next time.  I feel like I can chunk it out a little bit better and then discuss each topic rather than giving them the entire unit at once.  My on-level classes seemed to get a little bit more overwhelmed than my honors classes.

The next question I asked was how could you improve your learning next time.  Here are some responses.

by making a better presentation and being more focused

actually take more notes and write down all the important things. not play around as much and not talk as much either.

umm.maybe i could like focus more i guess

Focus did become an issue for some students.  I’m not here to sugar coat the experience.  I did have to make some corrections along the way.  However, the same issues would have been true with those same students if I was teaching in front of the class as well.  Knowing what I know now I will be able to focus more on those students in the future.

I then asked what exactly they liked about learning the information on their own and got these responses.

i liked that i wasn’t rushed, i could go on my own pace.

being able to work at my pace and not waiting on others

I could look deeply into the information.

well, i guess the part where i could go at my own pace and be creative with my work

Seriously?!  You couldn’t ask for better responses.  These same responses were seen over and over throughout the day.  One kid did put, “I learned nothing.”, but again…that was his/her choice.  They would have learned nothing no matter how the information was presented.

I then asked what I could have done better that would have made it more enjoyable and got these responses.

Less videos. Some assignments could use partners to make it go faster. (there were 3 total)

He could let us talk about it with our friends and the people around us, and possibly do some joint-partner work

Not put so many different things, as I feel like I’m being rushed

mr.kesler can help people more often

uh, i dont really know. maybe make the projects or worksheets more creative, i learn from creativity so i would learn alot better with creative worksheets or projects

Most of these are valid complaints and I will try and fix some of them.  There were only 3 videos and they were each under 5 minutes.  I don’t think I can change that.  I would definitely consider letting them work with partners next time, but I think that I will choose the partners that first round.  There was a ton of information, and I will be chunking it next time to help with the pacing.  I made the choice not to help unless information wasn’t being  understood correctly.  I didn’t want to spoon feed information for this  unit.  There were several worksheets (reading passages, graphs, etc.).  I’m thinking that I can easily switch those out for web articles next time.  It’s not reading if it’s digital, right? 

While I’m on the topic of fixing thing I would also like to point out that some of my interactive demos didn’t work because our web filters blocked the website on the BYOD network.  It’s a constant battle and I (the kids) always seem to lose.  I’ll fight on though.  The PBS website got blocked at some point throughout the week and some more information that I wanted to share was included on that.  I ended up doing the demos on my SMART board, but they were really cool hands on activities that should have been done by the students.  I think that if they were able to do those that the overall experience would have been better.  I need to get more creative about how information is shared I guess.  I also need to test sites on the Chromebooks first.

The next thing that I asked was how easy was it to use Symbaloo.  It performed like a rock star.  One student suggested that it would be nice if you could check off boxes as you went which I thought was a great suggestion.  I think I will send that over to Symbaloo as an idea.

I was surprised that they felt the directions were clear considering this was the first time that we had done something like this.  I’m happy with that!

A few more people said that they were less likely to want to do this again or in another class, but the majority still overwhelmingly supported it.

I then asked what their notes looked like and I think that I got some students that didn’t want to indict themselves.  Based on the notebooks that I saw many people  had good notes, but there were more than 4 that had bad notes.

Lastly, I asked them to provide some final comments.  I had the most fun reading through these.  I actually got goosebumps at some of their responses.  I’m very proud of them overall and will definitely be doing this again in the future.

it was very informative but i would like for Mr.Kesler to tech it to us next time becuase he explains it more better

mr.kesler is like the bomb.com & all these teachers hating because i know now i can do things on my own and i feel proud how i did my work independently

verall I had fun with this process because it allowed me to go at my own pace and function my own way. But then again I had fun with just the class one on one thing we had. When you could talk to us you were slow and straight to the point but still explained everything to your best abilities.

i think i learned a bit more than what Mr. Kesler would’ve done but really i found it more interesting, but Mr. Kesler would’ve done the same.

i feel like this is a good way for me to learn because i didn’t get left behind on anything and if i didn’t understand something the video was there to help so i liked it.

I feel like this is better for the faster-learners that learn things quicker than others, as we are not held back by others not understanding the material, requiring us to do more work on it after we’ve mastered it.

It was hardish and i barley learned any thing

i loved self paced learning so much i feel that i learned better using it that anyother way we have done it yet

The reality is that I will now go back and give them a quick “This is what you should have learned” lesson to ensure that everyone hears the correct message at least once, but it’s going to be highlights of the information and then we’ll test over it.  I’ll share those results when they come in.

Next week we take our science benchmark which will be our last snapshot before our state test in April.