My Discovery-Based Math Elective: Compiling PSets (Part 7)

This is part 7, of a 15-part series of posts detailing how I developed and piloted a discovery-based high school math elective. The first, introductory, blog post for this series can be found here [Introductions]. The goal of this post is to describe how students assembled and submitted the classwork in this class.

• As a math student in college, it was typical for us to do all our work on blank sheets of loose paper--personally, I prefer blank white paper, using grid paper as needed. Then at the end of the PSet, we would staple all the papers together in the proper order, and turn them in as a packet. We would then get our PSets back at a later date, graded.
• For this course, instead I opted to have each kid use a dedicated quad-ruled composition notebook. All their work for the class goes in the notebook. Only their work for the class goes in the notebook. Students could use as many pages as they needed. I just asked that they label the problem and PSet number by their work.
• I chose notebooks over loose-leaf stapled packets because the executive functioning demand is much lower. I don't want students to have to keep track of tons of loose-leaf paper. And I definitely don't want a kid to lose any of their work. I even had a dedicated space in the classroom where students could keep their notebooks easily, so they didn't have to take it out of the room if they didn't want to. I did have a student who had a particularly robust binder organization system, who convinced me to let him complete his PSets on lined paper in his notebook, and then he'd turn in the PSet as a packet, college style. He even showed me the section where he would keep his graded PSets, all organized. I didn't regret my decision, and his system worked well.
• I opted for quad-rule in the notebooks, because it can do basically everything that blank or lined paper can. And there are things I need quad-rule for, and I don't want students to waste time/energy making grids on their blank/lined paper. So if I'm going to ask them all to do their math in the notebook, they should have access to quad-rule paper if possible.
• Other things I tried, and learned from
• Submitting PSets on Google Slides
• Originally, I asked students to take pictures of their work, and then upload it into a Google Slides template. The template had a title page and a bunch of blank slides in the middle for them to fill. After the blank slides, there were a couple generic questions to summarize their learning on the PSet. Then the last slide was a blank version of the rubric. Here's an example I made using some math work I had on hand from a different class.
• I liked this system for a few reasons:
• Giving feedback on the computer allows me to use copy/paste, and the canned comments feature of Google Classroom. I can also type faster than I can write. Which improved efficiency while still offering detailed feedback and comments.
• It was a system that organically archived everyone's work, for the entire class.
• Students could upload more slides and pictures, then resubmit. Through the resubmission system on Google Classroom, and the "version history" feature, it was easy to see what had been revised.
• Students could do work with manipulatives, on the computer, or on the whiteboards, which they could upload pics or screenshots of.
• Occasionally students would use text boxes, and other slide tools to help explain what's going on in the PSet.
• I did NOT like this system for so many more reasons:
• My school kicked all the students off the WiFi, so they couldn't upload pics easily. Which was especially brutal, because my classroom was in the basement, so they couldn't even get data reception. Hassle.
• Some students would do a ton of great work during the week, but never got around to transferring it to the slides, so I didn't have much evidence to warrant as much credit as the deserved. Waste of effort.
• It's not always easy to read pictures of student work. Hassle.
• I had to have laptop access every Friday. Waste of resources.
• I had to dedicate half of Friday to students assembling their PSets, instead of doing more math. And the amount of time students needed to do this was so wildly variant, that it was hard to give them less time to do it, in order to squeeze in more math time. Waste of time.
• The generic questions at the end of the PSet rarely resulted in meaningful student responses, and often when undone. Waste of time.
• Submitting PSets on Google Classroom
• I did this during our distance learning time. I would make an assignment on Google Classroom, and I asked students to upload pictures of their work, links to any online stuff they did, or screenshots of whatever work they did on the computer. A few even uploaded videos of them explaining or demonstrating some of their work. Some made and uploaded slides like we had done earlier in the year. All good stuff. I would say that this is an improvement on the whole Google Slides system, though still far inferior to the notebook PSet system.