What if We Flipped Learning?

We have all experienced the struggle in math class, whether it was you struggling or seeing someone else in the class struggling. There’s just too little time in class to learn all the material for the day and to also practice it too. Then to add to that stress, having the homework and not knowing how to do it after you get home for the day. Many parents even struggle when helping their child with their math homework because it's been years since they've done it. This is where the idea of flipped learning comes into play. The idea where you spend around 15 minutes outside of class learning new material then going to class the next day to fortify and build upon that knowledge through activities in class.

Flipped learning is a good way for teachers to know who is struggling and have the time to help them in class while the students work on activities or worksheets. The outside learning portion should only really need to be around 15 minutes because of the attention spans of the students. I myself wouldn’t want to watch a 30-minute video because I would get too distracted. Now the learning method doesn’t have to be a video, but it could also be a reading. The videos also don’t need to be the teacher’s own video but could be someone else’s video if the teacher thinks it could benefit the class more. Sometimes other people just teach it better or a topic could be confusing to teach. However, I believe the majority of the videos should be the teacher’s own because the students should be aware of how they teach. 

My own experience with flipped learning was during a calculus class at my high school where the teacher was gone for about 2 months, so there was a substitute each day in class. We had to watch videos outside of class, and then do worksheets during class the next day. If someone struggled with a question, as a class or in groups, we would problem-solve together to figure out the answer because the substitute didn’t know how to do calculus. This actually helped build connections in the class from all the group discussions the class did. Therefore, I did enjoy flipped learning for the short time we had it because it helped my understanding of calculus and I got to practice more on problems in class with my classmates.

Even though flipped learning seems like a perfect idea, it does contain some potential drawbacks. If a student doesn’t have internet access at home, how will they be prepared for the next class? What if more classes decide to do flipped learning, I could take a guess that a student wouldn’t want to spend hours after school learning new material. Lastly, if there are no guides to the flipped learning or worksheets to go along with the video or reading, would the student do it?

With all things considered, flipped learning could benefit the class in many ways, in understanding the material and getting continuous practice on it. It also helps a teacher not fall behind if sick or on vacation because they can just assign their video or reading for the day. We should engage more in flipped learning since I believe it has the potential to help students improve.

Equal Access for Students

As we start this semester of Math 371, we are just beginning to learn about the vast list of technological resources out there for teachers. As we continue through the semester, we will master how to use technology in our classrooms to improve students learning, but as teachers, we need to ensure the technology we are implementing into our classrooms isn’t harming our students.

While learning about new technology resources, Dr. Vestal posed a question along the lines of “Do you think technology grants more access to students?” My initial response to this question was “Yes, it definitely does.” I went on to talk about how technology allows students to do so many new things that students in the past weren’t able to do. For example, over the last few years students learned how to do school over Zoom, something that our parents never would have dreamt of being able to do. Students now can use online math manipulatives, graph equations on Desmos, watch videos over subjects they are confused about, and the list goes on. 

As we continued to talk about the topic of technology and access, I started to change my initial answer to the question posed. I still think technology has increased students’ access to many resources, but with this access, there comes a problem with equal access for everyone. Many students, especially at the high school level, are given school computers. Due to students having these computers, teachers are able to assign things online or implement a flipped classroom. Although students have access to a device, it is not guaranteed that the student has internet access at home, so that student would have a disadvantage not being able to do the online homework outside of school hours. The lack of internet access at home can lead to a wider gap in student’s performance and learning that may have already been created from past experiences. As teachers we need to keep this in mind as we are trying to shorten that learning gap and not widen it. 

The issue of students not having internet at home is a problem that teachers aren't able to fix, but teachers can be mindful of the problem. Before implementing certain things online, teachers should make sure all of their students have good internet access at home. For students who don't have access to internet, teachers should make a plan with the students to ensure that they are given ample time during school hours to get the assignments done. The student should not be hindered or punished for not having internet access at home. Teachers need to ensure that the technology they are using in the classroom isn't causing problems for any of the students.

Overall, I think technology has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in the classroom, but it has also created a new problem of equal access for all students. Educators need to be mindful of equal access when they are incorporating technology into the classroom. 

What is all the fuss about ChatGPT?

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last month, you have likely heard of ChatGPT and the concerns that teachers have due to this software. I understand these concerns for teachers who assign writing projects, which I do, but can a student use ChatGPT to write a research paper?

Since we are getting ready to discuss copyright in the Math 371 class, I wondered if ChatGPT was smart enough to not use copyrighted material. I decided to ask an SDState librarian who is the resident expert on copyright, Elizabeth Fox. Another concern I had is whether ChatGPT would produce a bibliography. Fox asked it “I need 5 peer-reviewed articles on artificial intelligence.” ChatGPT produced a list of 5 articles. It gave her a list, but the links to the articles didn’t work and when she searched databases for these articles, the articles did not exist. Therefore, I am not convinced that ChatGPT could write a good research paper with citations and a bibliography. Fox said that she thinks that ChatGPT is likely more of a danger with plagiarism than copyright violation.

But it certainly can write a persuasive essay—which colleges and teachers need to watch for. A computer science major at Princeton recently released an app, called GPTZero, which can determine whether something was written by a human or ChatGPT. This app gives a piece of writing a “perplexity” score and a “burstiness” score. The perplexity score is a measurement of how complex the writing is—the more complex, the more likely it is written by a human. The burstiness score looks at the variation in sentences—an essay written by AI is likely to have sentences of the same length, while a human varies the length of sentences.

I just copied the above paragraphs into GPTZero Classic and these paragraphs earned a perplexity score of 133.62 and a burstiness score of 282, and a final score of 79.43, which indicates that the text is likely human-generated.

I did ask ChatGPT to “create an engaging lesson plan to teach systems of linear equations.” It gave me a decent lesson plan, but it wasn’t very engaging because we need humans to be creative. I decided to take some of this AI lesson plan and put it into GPTZero so that I could compare scores. It gave the lesson plan a perplexity score of 119.44 and a burstiness score of 282, with a final score of 74.65, indicating that it is also human-generated. I am suspicious that ChatGPT found a lesson plan online and plagiarized it, which brings up another problem if students try to use it for a writing assignment. Keep in mind that I am using GPTZero Classic, which isn’t the latest version. One needs to sign up to use the newer version of the app.

ChatGPT curates the web for material before 2021—therefore, it isn’t going to have the most up-to-date information. I do understand why so many teachers are concerned about ChatGPT, especially when writing essays. We as educators need to be very clear with our expectations with assignments and likely we need to add something about using AI for writing to our syllabus. Software like ChatGPT is why many educators have a love-hate relationship with technology.

I will blog later this semester about ChatGPT and mathematics.