Monday, January 30, 2012

Flipped classroom and thatquiz

My lovely class of math students is doing great work in class, but very little at home. So now's as good a time as any to experiment with something new (flipped classroom) and something old (thatquiz).

What we're up to:
Every assignment consists of a video (Patrick JMT has a wonderful collection) on some topic (sine and cosine rules, most recently) and some basics exercises. Correcting basic work is not my idea of fun or meaningful so I let students complete assignments on thatquiz. If you haven't seen or tried this absolutely magnificently wonderful site then you're in for a treat. It's free, no ads, very accessible and customizable, it offers direct feedback, marks all assignments for you, and you can make your own assignments or choose from hundreds of ready made ones. And it's constantly improving.

So anyways... in class, students may ask whatever questions they have about the topics covered in homework, but primarily class time is devoted to practice with exam questions, going over worked solutions, and laying the stage for the coming topics. Today, for example, we used basic trig in a guided investigation leading up to and including sine rule and trig area formula. Here's the file:

Right-Angled Trigonometry Practice and Development

I'm thinking hard about how best to use class time now that I can focus on exercises and problem solving. It's important for me to retain a constructionist approach at least in setting the stage for the new material which the students will meet in lecture-style videos in their homeworks. This is super exciting. More updates will follow.