“Sisyphean High” is an example of anthimeria in the title of this post, because we’re talking about a different sort of action. As always, the most important thing we learn is always something about how we learn, and the makerspace exists to build a better version of each student.
To Sisyphean High, so to speak, is to study how we learn the way we’d study computing in order to build our own PC. It’s highly modular learning — that is, learning with a focus on understanding and then experimenting with each component1.
It is also best done collaboratively, hence:
That activity and the subsequent discussion need to be codified somehow, or we’ll lose the insight students gleaned from this year’s feedback after analyzing it in class2. For instance, that instructional post, “In It Together,” asks us to sort the responses into positive and negative piles, but students had a better idea almost immediately:
- A pile of responses that could be used to help others
- A pile of responses from students who seem to need help
That’s a great example of the best kind of feedback. And after we’ve done that — sorted the responses according to a different sort of efficacy and need — we can start getting down some of your insights.
Students: Use the comment section of this post to share ideas. Focus on how to galvanize peers and improve the learning environment. Reflect on the patterns you saw and the specific details that resonated. Above all else, be empathetic.
We’ll talk in class about how to use our universalized writing process to respond to this activity, too, according to your interest and investment. An open letter, a narrative, a how-to guide — these are all possible writing responses that could be published and publicized in order to help others.
If PC building isn’t your thing, I really do think this essay that uses cooking as the analogy is a helpful one. ↩
It’s important to link back to last year’s feedback, too, as part of this exercise. The insights are the same, although the data pool is shallower. ↩
What my group learned the most from this activity is that although we may have disagreed with some of the comments people had, we still saw that they could be used to help someone else who also thought differently. Having both “good” and “bad” comments helped make this connection.
I think this is the advantage of having most of the responses to the self-reflection available to you. You aren’t wading through a curated selection, and you aren’t being told what to think; you’re sorting and analyzing the data yourself. The next step is to share that insight with as many other students as possible, so I’m glad to see you start the online discussion.
I strongly agree with you, particularly with the beginning part of your reply where you state having most of the responses as an advantage. As opposed to only having a curated selection, being given such a large stack of responses that haven’t been pre-sorted, allows us to formulate and share our opinions on which responses are helpful for students and which represent those needing help. It allows for a lot of freedom regarding how the conversation takes place and progresses which can lead to the discovery of new ideas and points of view.
I think that being able to talk it out with each other benefitted us because everyone thinks differently and having another opinion made it easier to sort through the “good” and the “bad.” Seeing the responses that needed help made it clear that people don’t always understand the course or a specific skill needed for the course and it encouraged me and my group to start to think of ways to help them.
I agree with this and I also found it very interesting to compare how I interpered a question in comparison to someone who answered it completely differently. Its also cool how each question had mutiple answers and no “wrong” answer.
Agreeing with this point it is interesting to see how many people have all had the same time in the class but have had many different experiences as well as view points on their experience and what they gained from it. Since this was not a simple yes or no question it gave people the freedom to really speak their minds, and explain the positive affectes it had on our peers. As well as showing the critiques.
The comments seemed pretty positive. How are we going to incorporate the feedback into the classroom?
This post is one way to do it. I’d like to help you all create some physical posters, too, over the next week or so. It’s about creating a reference point for students. Consider the posters we already have, and think of what is missing.
Being able to sort out different piles of papers based on different feedback such as positive, negative, or in the middle was a great source of feedback to share throughout the makerspace. The reason for this is that most people will have positive feedback because of the way the classroom is handled in a supportive way. In fact, people with negative feedback can find the positive and learn from it while those who are confused can find a way to start or find a relieve from stress and etc.
That’s exactly the purpose! I’m glad to see it’s helping.
By reading the responses it allowed my group to formulate different ideas on how to help students who have a lack of understanding with the course or just need motivation in general. Hopefully from reading the positive responses they can see how others cope with the challenges they go through and apply that to their own.
A common pattern I noticed is that many students like the freedom to do assignments in a free environment. The negative comments seemed to be mostly about the amount of work given. I have to agree with the positive comments on the freedom of the space.
Most of the positive comments seemed to flow towards talking about the freedom to do work how they want and at their own pace, while most of the negative comments talked about lack of learning and minimal instruction. I agree with both sides to an extent because there may be very little instruction given to what to do in the class but all students have the freedom to work at their own pace and go however they want to with the class.
As the recent feedback post puts it (here is one for English 10), there are always deadlines and always instructions to follow. It takes a bit more effort to find it or to ask for it, but that’s the point: to build your self-efficacy and worth ethic. I want us to keep brainstorming about to demystify the process, especially since we can tailor instruction and feedback to each of you. That flexibility puts the onus on students.
In our classroom I notice that there is a lot of group work and students helping each other and working together. The work we do in class is a lot of communicating and working with peers. The assignments are easy to follow but sometimes we can get off track of what we are doing in class.
It’s inevitable that you’ll be off-task for moments. The goal is to recognize those moments and refocus quickly. The more self-aware you are, the better, but I think it also takes a collegial effort to help your peers.
The thing I noticed most was the colaboracion and the positive things that we used. The things that we do in class makes us work better because of how it works how we are seated and how we all know each other so well.
A common pattern that I saw while reading the students comments was most enjoyed this system and they are doing very well. While some students disliked the system we run in the classroom. Most students expressed how they liked having the freedom in the classroom to do their work. And most said this sytem really helped them.
I agree with Mr.Louie
I think these patterns allow us to understand and empathize with other peers and give us a new perspective to how other students approach the class which allows us to help each other improve by giving feedback.
I think it was really helpful to see the comments on a table in front of us as something tangible so we could have that more abstract way of sorting. My group tried to pinpoint specific words in both sets of comments that expressed who could help and who needed it. We found that a lot of the people who needed help seemed to show an issue with the Dunning-Krueger effect and self-awareness which is such a big part of this class. I think most importantly, to succeed in the makerspace you must keep an open mind and work hard at being self aware.
Good insight. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a universal problem, and I want us to help each other understand it. I’ll keep bringing us back to the ongoing discussions, which can potentially be a place for exactly that sort of ameliorative work: http://sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=2197.
When doing the activity that we started doing in the first week of February, the feedback that we were indirectly giving our fellow peers was very insightful and helped me reflect about myself and what is expected of us in this class. When looking at the work of other students, I saw I was looking for specific things, becoming a judge of my own. This act of becoming a judge led me to think of my work and it made me ask myself, “Was my work adequate?” The activity not only gave students feedback to improve their work and help them with meeting the criteria of the class, but it also helped me reflect about my own grades and how I can improve my own work.
I agree with the part about how reading the things other students said made you go back and question your own work. During this activity I too experienced this and found that through reading the responses other students wrote I discovered different ways in which people asses themselves and the work they create. In a system where we choose our own grades, the way we asses our work is extremely important. Through reading other peoples assessment strategies we can refine our own and create better work.
Early on in the first day of the activity, my partner and I found a good amount of positive responses to the questions. However, over time more answers with negative opinions began to show and we were able to put those two ideologies in their own separate groups. There were also responses that seemed to have a message that was both positive and negative at the same time; this turned into another group that we made when it came to sorting the different responses from the students. As was sad before, the responses to these questions were overwhelmingly positive.
Many of the comments I saw when sorting the responses with my group was that the students enjoyed the structure. They liked how we are able to work at the pace we want and how we are able to talk to others and get feedback while we work. They enjoyed that we don’t have strict deadlines, just enough to keep us on track and make sure we reach our assignments/goals.
The use of “strict” deadlines is tricky. We obviously have deadlines, and through Google Classroom, an automated way of showing us what’s late or missing; at the same time, the top profiles encourage individualized assignments and personalized feedback. The balance isn’t always easy.
The collaboration and determination required to understand the activity was crucial. My group was successful in that we were able to relate to almost all the slips and we talked through the positives and negatives that come along with this class environment. In order to recognize the faults in the people struggling, and writing the negative aspects, we were able to determine how to change that, or avoid it. The class requirments are sometimes lenient and my group and I decicded we like that for various reasons. There is less pressure and we are aloud to think in our own way.
What my group noticed while doing this assignment is that the positives outnumbered the negatives greatly. A lot of people think that this course helps them to prepare for the regents and opens their mind up to a new way of thinking and looking at assignments. We also found that in the negative responses that there’s always a positive response contradicting it.
All of us who teach in the space believe that the Regents Exam tests universal skills to enough of an extent to justify our focus on it. I’m glad to see you mention the test in the same breath as open-mindedness.
After viewing all of the comments i noticed that most people can agree on the point that this class is mainly based on trying to get you prepared for collage type classes. Some dislike the program mentioning that the process was confusing. I think as the year goes on that these people will realize that the class is a great chance to get yourself ready for college level classes and learn how to properly organize your assignments.
Even though there was a significant number of positive examples, there were also negative ones that in a way, I agreed with. The negatives had shown that I was not the only one having certain feelings about certain subjects, for example, some people said that they do not work best in groups, which I agree with to an extent. But there was also positive examples that I agreed with, for example, many said that the daily check-ins had helped them organize and gave them a task to do for the period, which I agree with as well.
Another tricky balance to strike is between collaboration and solo work. Some folks truly work better alone, but even they can’t do everything by themselves. The world requires collegiality and empathy to function. We all have to learn to be part of a group.
With that said, I want to give you all the freedom to take risks at your own pace — to work alone when you need to, as long as you are actively and metacognitively moving toward some kind of collaboration.
My partners and I found many more positive comments than negative and that was not a surprise to us. Many students’ comments were based around how they could get feedback from their teachers and peers to give constructive criticism on not only their writing assignments, but their questions. Also, many comments surrounded the fact that there is no strict grading rubric for all assignments and work that we do in here. Many kids are attracted to the grade abatement because they can fight for what they deserved.
To add onto this comment, I also believe that many students are in favor for the grade abatement, and find the grading style helpful and fair in the sense that students are allowed to write about their own work, in a way to fight for the work they are presenting the teacher with. The class is also rather laid back in the sense that students are expected to take the work upon themselves, instead of a teacher guiding class time and work agendas. The ability to walk in, set a goal for the day, and then have the freedom to work on any given assignment is rather helpful. Sisyphean High also helps students in the fact that students base assignments off the help of the website posts, and can write about how the website is helpful, of which they can then put into their grade abatement for each quarter.
Majority of the comments about the course and its contents were positive. There were some comments that were negative or that just didn’t make much sense. Most of the feedback talked about how the course allowed for them to challenge themselves and take risks. Students enjoy the collaboration in this course and also enjoy grade abatement so that they can earn or fight for what they think they deserve. However, when looking at the feedback regarding test preparation, my group and I found that there was more of a mixed bag in the responses. Some students said that they were satisfied and feel fairly prepared for the high stakes tests that are coming our way while others discussed how they would like more focus on test preparation and do not feel ready for these big exams. I think that the new schedule of setting aside Wednesdays for test preparation will help these students who want to put more attention on this topic.
The “new schedule” you mention gets at an interesting perspective that we all sometimes lose in public education: This is a year-long process, and it’s only at the end of the year (and sometimes even after that) that we can see that all of these concerns were addressed, one by one. Test prep is part of that. I don’t think I would ever be comfortable doing test-specific assignments every week for an entire year, but it needs to be regular enough to build a habit. We’ll try this once-a-week approach and debrief at the end about its efficacy.
The amount of positive overwhelmed the negative . This is most likely cause its the most fair grading compared to our grading system. This system of how we learn I think is better then what the grading system is actually. Grades can show anything, it shows either if they are trying hard, not trying but getting good grades, or just remember like many do. By showing the process taken it shows that they actually put effort and actually try, compared to people who just remember and almost don’t care at all. People who take the effort are the ones who build a work ethic early on. This people will be able to go farther than others because of their work ethic. People who are lazy but get through with ease don’t build a work ethic until later. It’s not just the grading but collaboration which is something that is enjoyed. They could like it cause they can actually talk to friends but it should be known that in real life collaboration is key for many jobs. The people who had negative things about it either didn’t understand the purpose of it or didn’t want
(continued) to understand it. These people are usually confused of why they need to follow this new system or don’t care about how it works.
Well said. I think when a student understands the benefits, like you do, the next step is to help others gain the same understanding. Think of it like a skeleton key: Understand these skills, traits, and profiles, and you should be able to apply that understanding to any assessment system, even after you’re done with school.
Grade abatement, when comprehended, can be a vital tool in helping understand how we ourselves learn. When the responses were sorted, many of them seemed to be positive and express an understanding on how the GAP Process works. While this is a huge success, there were still a few answers that expressed a lack of understanding in the process. In order for everyone to succeed, these students should not be left behind, and they should be helped to understand. In order to accomplish this, those who understand the process should explain and spend extra time with those who don’t, not just so the people that don’t understand it can learn, but also for those who do understand it to gain an important tool in peer collaboration. This collaboration can be done through writing, or simple face to face conversation.
My group had the responses on reading and writing. There were many more positive comments than negative, and the ones that were negative were more of suggestions rather than pure negative comments. But, it is clear that there are people that completely understand this course and how it works, and there are also people who obviously don’t get it and don’t put in the much needed effort it takes to understand what is going on. It is very easy to read the responses and see which ones were thought out by the people who do well and which ones were written quickly to get the assignment done. This class is all about the process of writing and the investment to reading. There is also a substantial component dealing with how students collaborate when given open ended assignments. The students who fully understand this course are able to relate to the positive responses and possibly help the people who wrote the negative responses understand on a different level.
Well put. It’s tough to balance a focus on process with the inevitable focus on product, but it is possible. Students like you have to help, as you noted.
When our group first started the activity we had the “on the Makerspace” question. We had two piles, one for negative comments, and the other one for positive. I think at first we weren’t really sure what that meant and didn’t really have any specific outlines. We then changed the piles to “needs help” and “probably doesn’t need help.” I initially thought that the needs help pile was just going to be people who were bashing the classroom simply because they didn’t quite get it, but there was some well developed answers that didn’t agree with the makerspace. There was a pretty large number of responses from students that seemed to understand the process and the strategies but that just disagreed with them. I thought it was interesting that we spent time reading well put together responses that completely disagreed with everything that we had been doing so far in class. I don’t think I’ve ever had a teacher make us read comments that went against them so openly. But the whole assignment was feedback based so I guess it makes sense to include everything.
This is a particularly helpful comment. I value all feedback — not just positive feedback, but constructive criticism, too. That’s part of what I hoped you all would see. The space is designed to evolve, and evolution requires pressure and time.
The other side of this, of course, is that there is a point when an opinion shades off into an error of fact. Once you trust that the space is built to help every student, that becomes less of an issue. The goal is to find a way for everyone to develop the skills and traits that are necessary for success in the future, so I am willing to redesign elements of the course repeatedly to make that happen.
After reading all the class comments, I realized that there were much more positive than negative comments. All positive comments pretty much explained why they liked this course so much and that they find it much more helpful when they can get feedback from their peers and teachers. The negatives explained how it was more difficult when they worked in groups but I believe they should to an extent.
What my group learned most from this activity is that most of the feedback was positive and outweighed the negative. Most people found the system successful and that it works for them, but then there were some where it didn’t work for them and they would like to change it. There were also some where there wasn’t enough effort put in to tell what category they would fit in. Also, some students don’t feel comfortable leaving back negative criticism so that could be a major reason on why there was a lot more positive than negative.
I understand the fear of offering constructive criticism. It’s one reason I left in that sort of feedback: to show you all that it’s welcome. When it’s uninformed or misinformed, of course, we have to correct the person; that’s usually a matter of providing the correct information and counseling the person to be more informed in the future. Legitimate criticism is always welcomed.
Here is a PDF detailing an example of this: The Mirror and the Mountain. (It needs to be converted into a permanent post on this site, but the PDF will do for now.) The first story is an example of how student feedback actually shapes the course.
Many of the comments that my group sorted through were how well people felt this class prepared them for both the real world and important exams. I found it interesting that the responses were generally divided when it came to the two topics. Most people seemed to say that the class did prepare them for the real world, specifically the fact that we’re often left to our own devices to navigate our responsibilities. The majority of people said that they enjoyed this aspect because it was similar to how we will be treated in college. However, many people also said that they felt the class sort of left them in the dark when it came to preparing for important exams, such as the regents that we will be taking soon. It was interesting to see that people could be sort of conflicted over their opinion of the class due to different factors.
Since there were a pretty equal amount of responses that were helpful and in need of help, I believe what this exercise taught me was how to work with others. We cannot force people to act differently, or to perceive something a certain way. What we can do is motivate people in need of help, and show them how to look at things in a different light. You cannot force someone to do something, but guiding them towards the right direction is a way you can help. Whether it be through demonstrating a more creative, interesting approach to tackling a project, or positive reinforcement, the thought of guidance can be effective in helping others.
I meant *help others, not work with others.
I think it’d be beneficial too for every student who needed help to understand that a lot of this class is focused on growth and not necessarily the final product. Rather than thinking about how we can complete an assignment we should focus on internalizing the lessons and what we learned from our last writing piece.
After reading the class comments and other collective group work, I noticed a trend amongst the negative comments that really caught my attention. For example, I noticed, especially in the comments regarding sensitive topics, language that could be perceived as offensive and aggressive. Some students took this assignment as an opportunity to write diatribes as a way to express their personal opinions. I do not believe that including the f-word and calling people names is an effective way of getting your message across to readers. Including this kind of language essentially turns your audience off, contradicting your purpose of even writing that piece to begin with. I am strong supporter of writing opinion-based pieces but, there is a proper and effective way to do it.
Our group preferred to have physical copies of the responses because we found it much easier to develop more meaningful strategies when examining them. For example, once we separated the responses into two separate piles we decided to pinpoint certain words that were common in each pile. As a result we noticed the Dunning-Kruger effect: a cognitive basis in which people believe they are smarter or more capable than they are. More specifically, we noticed the Dunning-Kruger effect was more evident in the pile consisting of those who need help. A pillar of this course is self awareness. Therefore, those who exhibit the Dunning-Kruger effect are more likely to struggle because they are not self-aware. Having an open mind, and constantly working to improve your skills are essential to being successful in this class.
Being able to collect student feedback through the classroom and organize it allows us to further improve our makerspace. We were able to find out where students are struggling and how they can be helped. Unfortunately, it seemed that the majority of the students who were doing poorly had no intention of improving and blamed the makerspace model. This attitude is probably the exact reason they are struggling to understand the makerspace this late into the year.
What helped my group learn the most was reading both “good” and “bad” comments. By reading other peoples comments it helped us understand other people’s situation and different ways of looking at the class. There were more positive comments then negative, which seemed to be a pattern for each question. I think by reading all comments, positive and negative helps everyone understand other people’s ideas better.
Here is a link to the response that I wrote:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ch6aQYZp1OSMFE5yB3LbPPwq2BgSkqDI-PDMiudKbW0/edit?usp=sharing
It’s pretty lengthy, which is why I didn’t just write it as a comment.
During this activity we mainly noticed that people’s problems with the course stemmed mainly from misunderstanding rather than dislike of the systems we use in class. I think by utilizing the tools of communication and open forum that have been so beneficial to our class we could better explain the purpose of our classroom model and help increase the positive communication in our class. Positive feedback definitely outweighed the negative, but I still feel it is important that everyone in the class is getting the most out of our classroom model. I think by reaching out to them, we can make our classroom more productive and purposeful.
In my group, I saw a lot of people help each other with certain responses. There were definitely more positive responses than with negative responses, which was what I was expecting. It was very interesting seeing what others have to say to the same question and what their perspective was on it. I also noticed how the positive comments explained more on what they thought about the class and had a better explanation than the negative comments. Most of the negative comments were short and didn’t really explain their thought process. I feel like it is very important to read what others have to say because you can see where you are compared to them. Seeing what others have to say can also show you a new way of looking at the question. It can also show you what you missed and learn from it. Reading people’s comments also showed me what responses were written quickly and what responses were thought out.
During the exercise from class a few days ago, I noticed a few things. At my table, we sorted the responses to “our approach to reading,” and “our approach to writing.” We first sorted the piles based on positivity and negativity, but we ultimately changed these piles. We noticed that most of the responses were positive, especially the responses on reading. Most students enjoyed the free reading period given to them, and they valued this time. More specifically, they found it as a period in the day to relieve stress. Also a lot of the responses mentioned not having any time to read at home, so this time in school was especially useful. However, many of the writing responses were not this positive. They frowned on the amount of metacognitive assignments we have in English this year. A few used the words “excessive” or “useless,” or at least a synonym to those words. If I could reach out to those students directly, I would explain how these metacognition assignments are meant to build up our skills in that area. Metacognitive writing and thinking doesn’t only come in handy in junior year English class, but in other areas of life. Being able to think metacognitively helps to write anything, not just an essay.
I was sorting through the “Reflect on the extent to which the interstitial classroom’s flipped, multi-level instruction has changed how you access lessons and other important information.” pile. While sorting them there were generally three answers. Answers talking about how they have used flipped instruction and how it has been beneficial to them, answers talking about how flipped instruction hasn’t helped them, and answers of students that don’t really know what is going on. I separated them into two piles: the people who liked and disliked flipped instruction were in one pile as the people who could potentially help others, and the people who did not know what was going on or were confused were in another pile as the “needing help” people. The way this class is taught is definitely different from the way many other classes are taught so it is understandable that it may be hard for people to grasp. But since it is the middle of the year, some students have worked with and understood this form of flipped instruction and will be able to help others who do not. It was more clear who was trying to work with this new teaching method and who was not. Many of the answers in the “good” pile were long and detailed but they were sometimes short and to the point so length was not the only deciding factor in which pile the response went into. However, almost all of the answers in the “bad” pile were very short and included little to no details, which can seem like they don’t really know what they are talking about. Having a negative opinion on flipped instruction did not mean it was a “bad” answer, because part of what this course is, is finding out what learning type of learning is best for you. Many of the of the answers were pretty straight forward. This exercise showed me that people can have different learning preferences and that is all fine, but when you are not understanding it, then it is ok to ask for help, and it is not just the teacher that can provide this help but other students too because they may have different perspectives on ideas.
From this exercise I found that the difference in understanding of those who seem to understand this course and those who don’t, appears to be a great difference. From reading the responses it was very clear that some students were not understanding the prompts and the concepts in the prompts at all. There were responses that were one sentence long, and these one sentence responses showed that not much effort was put into it and that the person who wrote it was just saying something that didn’t make much sense in an effort to complete the assignment. The responses from those who understands this course were drastically different, they were using the language of this course, and they were conveying their ideas in a specific and thoughtful way. In order to help those who are struggling in this course, I think that those who do understand the course should be empathetic and share their knowledge/thoughts in order to help those who are struggling. This help can come in many forms, but I think that most effective form would be some sort of class discussion and/or proxy teaching, where we can discuss what we’ve learned from this course and try to teach some of these skills to those who haven’t developed these skills yet.
Going through the pieces of paper helped my group learn a few key things. First, the people
Who fell into the u derstanding cateogroy used a lot of the same language, like teamwork, independent and focused to describe there time in class and there responses were considerably longer than the ones that were in the struggling pile. Every so often we would find a well written one in the struggling pile that talked about valid concerns and we would move it to the “get it” pile because we realized that they understand what’s going on but it’s going to take more time for them to adjust to it. Overall this excessive helped us get an insight into what the students as a whole are doing and how our own routine compares to others. It also helped us see it in a new light.
While reading the responses that were given to us, my group realized that we all have common goals and views on things that we do in this class. Most of the comment were positive and had similar aspects to them that connected them. There were only a few that were negative per say or just didn’t have must writing and depth at all. There was only a few long responses and my group felt that most of those were going off on s tangent and didn’t really answer the prompt clearly, we put these in s desperate pile from the rest. Overall this activity helped my group see the meaning and reason for these questions and how each student comprehens them.
The whole idea of sorting through responses in order to give feedback to them was a great way for the individuals that were sorting to receive feedback about what works and what doesn’t. The activity wasn’t for the benefit of the author of the response, but instead it benefited the students sorting through them. It’s well known that everyone has differing views and opinions on just about everything, so obviously in deciding which response was helpful and which ones needed help, there was going to be disagreement due to different points of views, thoughts and understanding. Some may view that as frustrating, but I see it as every student getting to comprehend different views on the subject and gaining a new understanding from it. I feel that if this activity was done solo, it would have been less effective due to the fact that discussing and coming to a common understanding with your peers was a major part of gaining new information from this activity. Additionally, people who felt as if they don’t have a complete understanding of certain aspects of the classroom, had the opportunity to gain more knowledge and clear up any confusion or missing information they had previously about the classroom. Lastly, seeing and agreeing on which responses weren’t helpful, led to all the students participating in the activity learn how to give better constructive criticism/feedback next time they need to.
My group was given the comments written about technology. While reading, we realized that over all the comments were positive. Almost all of the comments stated how much they loved how much freedom we are given. They liked how everything was easily accessible to them on classroom and that Sisyphean high is simple to manage. A lot of people mentioned how they like how everything is online because they are able to do their work wherever they have wifi, a few people also said that they love how they can still work even if they forget to bring and or charge their Chromebook. On the other hand a handful of students discussed how they can easily get off task because of how much freedom they have and all the devices are so accessible to them. But, I believe this issue will be solved with the new “no cellphone” policy. Not having your phone on the table or around you will help students not be as tempted to reach for it.
My group and I had the responses to reading and writing. While I did notice trends with the positive comments, like peers loving the freedom of the course and the ability to work and collaborate with each other, I also noticed certain trends about the negative comments as well. Most people leaving negative comments or suggestions on how to improve the course seemed to not like the writing assignments and how they were given to us. I feel as though if you are fully invested in this course and take the necessary time to read and process the information given to us, it is quite easy to write a well thought out response to just about anything. There are a lot of tools available to us to help understand and comprehend just what is asked of and how to go about competing it. Which is why I think if those students worried less about just getting the assignment done and rather focused more on what they are getting out of it, it would be beneficial to them.
It seems that a lot of people find this source useful as do I. You are able to formulate ideas and express them during things like the Grade Abatement on why you deserve the grade you think you should earn.