Website with Videos can be found here under the Forensic Science section.
Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?
The answer to that question is yes and no :) As the project progressed the plan changed and was re-implemented. Initially, the plan was for me as the teacher to create the lab screencasts which then changed to having the students complete the screencasts for me. Unfortunately, the speed at which the students worked on screencasting was not fast enough to use them in a timely manner. A week after our first activity I still didn't have anything from the students who volunteered to create the screencast. Even after I told them to simply get me a PowerPoint and a script and I would do the final editing I didn't get anything back. I went back to my original plan of creating videos myself in order to allow students who were absent , suspended or homebound to get caught up on their lab work. We have also gotten a reminder from our Turn Around Specialist (we are a SIG school) that we are to focus on curriculum in our classrooms and teaching how to make screencasts fall out of the realm of my science curriculum at this time.
Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice
I am seeing an increase in student grades based on make-up work turned in this past week. Where in the past I've had 20 - 30% of students making up missing lab work, I now have 40% of students who have completed make-up work with the final due date for work November 3rd. I've also had students complete an exit survey to get their opinion on the ease of completing make-up labs online. A majority of the responses so far have been positive and appreciative of the ease of making up lab work. Students like that they can complete the work anytime anywhere instead of being limited to one or two make-up session after or before school. I should have all survey entries and work by 11/3/11 (the day before 1st MP grades are due).
How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you've learned here?
Now knowing how long students take to work on creating a screencast, I might try to run through the labs prior to starting a new unit. This would give students more time in creating our lab videos without causing our absent/suspended/homebound students to get further behind. If I have the chance to teach Forensic Science next year I will already have a collection of videos ready to use.
What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?
Creating the first video took me three hours - it took time to organize everything, figure out correct timings and work on voiceovers. It didn't help that my husband was blowing out the sprinklers and the loud noises could be heard in the final video! The second video took about an hour and the third took about the same time even though it was much longer. I also had to go back and edit our original lab handouts and directions since the students won't be able to do exactly what was done in class.
In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do?
I hope to continue to do make-up labs in this manner - as long as it appears to help my students. So far the response has been positive. Any changes made will be based on student requests on their exit survey. Right now, I am only focusing on Forensic Science because it has the bulk of my students. As the Curriculum Lead for my department I am going to suggest this is a technique we look at for our chemistry course as it is lab based and many of the teachers have expressed concern with the correlation between low grades and missing labs. With additional teachers working on a large scale implementation we might develop another way to solve our absentee problem :)
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