Project brings a little Hollywood to teaching teachers a different way to teach Algebra
Indiana high school students enroll in college at a lower rate than elsewhere in the nation and enrollment among lower-income students in the state is lower still.
Many students in Indiana lack access to academically challenging science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educational opportunities in particular, experiences that correlate with whether a student goes on to college or not.
Gaining Early Access and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (Indiana GEAR UP), a program spearheaded by Purdue’s College of Education, works with school and community partners around the state to address this issue in a variety of ways. One way is STEM-oriented teacher professional development.
Enter the Course Production team from Purdue University Online.
GEAR UP wanted to create an online course showing teachers how they could make Algebra lessons a more engaging, interactive experience for students. Taking Algebra in high school has an especially strong correlation with college enrollment.
The idea was to build a lesson around a proven system known as the 5Es: engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. That methodology was not unfamiliar territory for the Purdue University Online course designers, but the project came with a twist.
GEAR UP wanted the online course to show real teachers in action teaching real students Algebra by applying the 5Es in a lab setting in a real class.
“That was the vision from the get-go,” said Virginia Bolshakova, Indiana GEAR UP executive director and assistant professor in the College of Education. “It was no small feat to get everything arranged and organized.”
For the Course Production team, it meant trying something different – a multi-camera live video shoot at a remote location, in this case Kokomo High School, which agreed to be the “set” for the production.
Working with GEAR UP staff members and Kokomo teacher Jennie Powell, Vincent Hornbach and Emily Craven, video production specialists for Purdue University Online, used three cameras recording over two days to catch the action from various perspectives, resulting in about 30 hours of raw video. The team edited this down to five separate videos approximately 10 minutes long, choosing footage that best illustrates one of the 5Es. Those videos became an integral part of the finished course.
“We thought that instead of just telling them about this approach we would show them how it was actually done and generate some excitement about it,” said Erica Young, a senior instructional designer for Purdue University Online.
The course, titled “Teaching Hands-On Math: Linear Equations,” shows Algebra 1 math teachers how to combine hands-on, collaborative math lab activities with a 5E-based lesson plan, as opposed to a more traditional approach with students listening to a lecture and working individually on a problem sheet. The videos illustrate that while taking the lab approach may sound a bit like herding cats, it is doable and effective.
In addition to the videos, the training course includes interactive activities such as having teachers convert one of their lesson plans to a 5E plan and upload it to the course website, which also functions as a 5E lesson plan repository. The course site, built in Purdue’s web-based Brightspace learning management system, includes an online discussion board as well, enabling teachers to interact with their peers, share ideas and ask and answer questions.
The two-hour, self-paced asynchronous course is available free to any Indiana teacher at this website. Teachers can earn two licensing points for completing it. For more information on the course and how to register see this document.
For more information on working with Purdue Teaching and Learning Technologies and its Course Production team, email tlt@purdue.edu.