Giving help when it's needed
My students are busy working on the investigations and I am sat at home in my study watching over them. This is true in two ways, my house does overlook the college so I can see the students from my study window. I used to be able to see right into my lab but a boat house was built in the way. That's a pity since I can no longer see if students are playing computer games in there. I have the fastest internet on campus (obviously) so popular with the gamers.
The other way I am watching over them is via google classroom. This is a really handy tool for monitoring student progress and giving feedback. The best thing is that feedback can be timely. if there is a mistake in the theory I pick it up at the beginning before the research goes to far down the wrong path. Students who work in a systematic way benefit greatly, students who do everything last minute don't.
This is the second year that I have used Google classroom but I am no expert at setting it up and using all the tools however i can describe what I do.
You have to have Google apps for education. This is free and is something that links Google docs etc across your domain. You and your students also need to be in the same domain. I didn't set this up for my school but we use Gmail as our email service and have our own domain. We actually have two, one for students and one for staff. this caused problems so I have a student account that I use or the classroom. If you don't know what I'm on about ask your IT department. I think you can set up your own domain but I've never done it.
Once installed classroom will appear in the list of Google apps in the top right hand corner of Gmail. It's at the bottom. follow instructions to create a classroom. its easiest if you have a list of your students email addresses, then you just paste in the list and your students get an invite.
The next step is to create an assignment. Again follow instructions. I don't do anything fancy just give a title, some intro and a deadline. Students get automatic notification.
Students the create a document in the classroom space. This is simply a Google drive shared between you and your students. What the classroom does is make all the connections and permissions for you.
Students don't have to work online but if they do I can see what they do in real time. There is a chat facility for live communication but students often leave applications open when not working on them so i spend a lot of time chatting to their sleeping computers, that or they are ignoring me.
When the students cooperate it works great. I go into the classroom a couple of times a day during the 3 week IA period to check on progress (I have 25 students). If I see any change I read what they have done and make a comment. I want to see the progress so ask them to always work in the classroom from day 1. When they have a research question I want to see it, then I want the theory and hypothesis followed by the method. I check at each stage and give feedback. I'm also doing this in the lab but I think more clearly at home. This is my view of the classroom.
As you can see, all of my students are making progress especially Liv who asked for a mention :-)
After a while I get to know what my students are doing and what they've done so it doesn't take too long to skim through every ones reports. Whenever I leave a comment the student gets an email. If they respond to the comment I get one, so i don't always have to go into all the documents.
In the past I have found that students sometime misunderstand the underlying theory of what they are doing and process their data incorrectly. The error then follows through to the conclusion which is trying to justify something that is wrong. To correct the mistake they will have to start again. I could pick up on this in the lab but it can be a bit hectic and if they don't ask I won't find out. Google classroom enables me to keep track.
I really hate having a big pile of marking. I much prefer a bit at a time, using this method I spread the workload over the whole period. When the first draft is ready I have already read most of it. the feedback at this stage is very little, they have already had feedback and according to the regulations there should only be one feedback on the draft. I do only give one feedback it's just that it is done in stages.
At the end of the process the deadline is clear and in my experience almost everyone abides by it. if they don't then I already have their incomplete work that can be submitted. The threat of submitting the rough draft is enough to get most students to finish.