Today we had the opportunity to participate in Ed Camp UVic 2020. I honestly found the experience kind of chaotic and not the best learning environment for me. Switching between Breakout Rooms and coming into the middle of a conversation made it hard to follow what was happening, and it just didn’t work for me personally. Other people, though, seemed to be getting something great out of the event, and that’s awesome for them, but it just wasn’t my opinion. I feel like this is at least partially due to the event being on Zoom that made it awkward for me. I’ve found this semester that having classes on Zoom hasn’t been great for my learning and I have to push myself much more to pay attention and absorb information in Zoom classes than I would have had those classes been in person. I also feel like I would have gotten more out of this experience had I been further into my teaching degree or already teaching. As it was, I felt I didn’t have a lot to contribute to most of the conversations I was in aside from the occasional question. Again, this could be due at least in part to the nature of Zoom meetings, and how much harder it is for me to figure out the right timing to say something without being spoken over, and how much harder it is in general to read people’s body language and mood when you can only see them in a pixelated rectangle. That being said, I do feel like I learned some things during Ed Camp.
I spent some time in the Breakout Room talking about group projects. The general consensus between participants was that while group projects had a lot of merits, they could also be very stressful to the students that found themselves taking on the bulk of the work, or to students who averaged an A grade who were partnered with people who averaged at, say, a C. Making group projects work as a learning opportunity for all students involved was something we could all agree was necessary. Grading group projects solely based on the work of the group is good in that it encourages the development of teamworking skills, but problematic in that the student who does 90% of the work receives the same grade as the student who does 10%. Something that seemed to work in group projects people had been a part of in the past was a split between a group grade and an individual grade, where the overall work done by the group made up, say, 75% of a student’s grade on the project, and then the work that student personally did made up the other 25%. This could be measured by having the group members each send in their opinions on what everyone did, where the teacher would then compare the assessments from all members to get a fair picture of the division of effort, or in some other way that accurately measures participation.
I also spent some time in the Breakout Room about diversification in the classroom. When I was in this room, the discussion was a little scattered and I didn’t take many notes, but there was one thing that stood out to me. One of the participants mentioned that you should view challenging behaviours instead as the student having lagging or excelling skills. Students who are either behind in the skills needed to understand a subject can become overwhelmed and shut down, and those who are already proficient in a subject and who already know how to do whatever topic is being taught can become bored and restless. Both of these cases can lead to students exhibiting challenging behaviours—talking over the teacher, running around the classroom, generally being disruptive. Just addressing the challenging behaviour might get them to stop for now, but that behaviour will keep coming back if the underlying cause isn’t addressed. The students who are lagging should instead be given a more in depth explanation to help them understand, and the students who are excelling should be given something more challenging to engage them in what they’re learning. Doing this will have more effect on minimizing the challenging behaviours these students exhibit than simply punishing the challenging behaviours.
