Reinforcing effort is definitely a task I need to do a better job of in my high school video classes. The students realize that if they make the effort to pay attention to my lectures, complete their assignments and study their vocabulary they will do well on their daily work and tests. Most of them choose to do all of the work on time and do outstanding. Some of the students choose to do the work late (after they have already taken the test on the material) or do not do the work at all. When I talk to the students that put forth a poor effort they acknowledge that the daily work is not too difficult and completing it on time would improve their test scores, but many admit they are just concerned with passing the class. I talk to them about getting into college, earning recommendations, establishing solid work habits, expectations in the business world, etc, etc, etc and I still can not get through to some of them. I often find that passing video class is the least of these kids’ worries, and I even try to help them in their core classes so they can graduate on time, but some of them are just plain apathetic.
On the other hand, students react to their video projects completely differently. I hear so many excuses for poor efforts that I should really record them and make my own video. The ones I hear the most are a students complaining that someone in their group would not do anything. I always ask them a number of follow-up questions about how they tried to motivate that student, if they made an effort to go forward with the project without him or her, and why they did not let me know earlier. Most students eventually admit that they could have made a better effort themselves and created an acceptable project, but I also have students who believe that they are totally inept when creating a video. The good thing is that I can usually point back to a good job they did on a rigidly structured video completed early in the school year and they buy into my system a lot more for their next video. The creation of a quality video is a difficult process, but it can be done by just about anyone with the right amount of preparation and effort. Often I will have students that think they can just pick up a camera and quickly shoot a good, impromptu video, but those students almost always realize the value of planning after seeing other students’ work.
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Do you think the lack of effort has anything to do with the population of your school?? I am not sure what the socioeconomic status of the school is, but I wonder if this effort issue is related.
ReplyDeleteYou could also have students turn in a self-evaluation as part of the project. Rubistar is a great resource to make a effort rubric for students to turn in with their projects.
I do think the population of my high school (over 3,500 students at last count) compounds this problem because many students do not get the personal attention they are accustomed to in their K-8 experience. I know a lot of students think that they can slip by with poor effort unnoticed because there are students doing worse and each teacher only has them for 54 minutes per day and teaches well over 100 different students throughout the day.
ReplyDeleteI think a self-evaluation is a great idea and I really like the Rubistar site. I will begin using the self-evaluation tool with the video my students are turning in Friday next week before Thanksgiving break (which cannot get here soon enough!).
You said the most common complaint you have heard is from someone not doing their fair share of the work. I have had such experiences and I used to just let it be that that person would not get the grade but everyone else in the group who participated. But then I wondered what am I really trying to accomplish? Do I want each student to participate or do I want to give students the option to not complete my work? So I started using rubrics for each group assignment and each person received a copy of the rubric so they could assess their final product. It has been working quite effectively since the other students get on the one who is slacking off. They realize the importance of team work and that is the most important thing.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of using rubrics as an evaluation tool where you allow the students to evaluate their work and their classmates work?