Certainly, I had some of those thoughts in the back of my mind when I started out last spring to modify how Economics of Personal Finance was taught at 'Iolani. No, I wasn't thinking revolution, but I did have some ideas I was hungry to try. After a pretty serious summer planning and working on the course, I had a game plan that included gamifying the course, incorporating our traditional money simulation, adding in lots of different optional ways for students to get points and allow them to follow their own interests, and operating the nuts and bolts from a brand-new, custom iPad app.
Whew. The first quarter was full of minor adjustments, and I thank my first semester guinea pigs with all my heart for sticking with it. Besides the expected 'Oops, I guess I should have done it differently' kinds of things that are expected when one tries something new for the first time, I came away with a few major lessons that have started to crystallize for me this semester as I went through the course for the second time.
We as teachers don't have nearly the control over student learning that I always thought we did. When it comes down to it, a student learns what he or she chooses to when ready to absorb it. After finding research showing that simply exposing students to financial material in a class may not actually improve financial outcomes, I added a journal project where students related each exercise to their own financial futures. I also asked them to summarize what they had learned for the term. I found that the depth of their analysis had clear correlation to their self motivation as well as their grades. The journals gave me a wonderful picture of what each student had learned, better than any test or quiz. The students also pretty accurately assessed themselves and their achievement.
Also, I can clearly see the value of trying to change student behavior and learning at the margins. In this type of class, I am clearly acting in the role of coach, providing opportunities to learn while allowing students to pursue their interests and learn that they are capable learn anything they choose. When it comes down to it, I think that the new version of the course was exactly as successful for many students as the more traditional version was when I taught it before. Those who chose not to work hard learned little, just as one would expect. Those who did a reasonable amount of work learned and earned their grades. Those who worked hard excelled.
With that admission, one might conclude that the pilot experiment was a wasted effort. However, I came to a different conclusion. While the class had similar outcomes for many of the students, I believe that there were 4-5 students out of my year cohort of 38 juniors and seniors for whom the course was truly transformational. Half of these students I had taught in previous classes, and in those math or biology classes, these students were average to below average 'Iolani students. What I saw as transformational for them was only partially related to the content they learned in the class but much more due to the structure of the class that allowed them to take charge of their own learning in ways most of them had never done before. The ability to choose which projects they did and when they did them changed the learning experience for them and allowed these previously ordinary students to truly excel.
Some of the gain was related to using the iPads (though, frankly, in the shake down first quarter, they may have cost as much time as they saved due to our inexperience) as constant research and media creation tools. A lot of our successes were due to the open ended nature of the course. Even some of the students who said in the evaluations that they wished they had more structure acknowledged that they learned now to better manage their time.
At any rate, that's 10% of my students this year for whom I believe the new structure of the course made a huge difference. That's change at the margins. For me, the comments from those particular students have been confirmation enough to justify a year's work.
I actually was a transformative influence on 10% of my students! It is good enough for me.
"This quarter has been a really good course for me. At the start of second semester, I hoped this class would be what I hoped it would be and give me an A in a math course for the first time in ever. So far, this course has exceed my expectations. ... The xp/quest format of assignments is great. I absolutely love it because it gives me the opportunity to work on assignments at a leisure pace and still get knowledge out of it. Most classes are pretty generic and really structured. This class gives me a lot of leg-room, if you will, to work on assignments and the website. .... Lastly, I want to comment on the journal. You said in the explanation of this assignment, you do this as a way to get us to understand what we do. It’s great! A bit tricky because of the specific topic categories, but a perfect way to actually understand the content.
I wish other classes did something like this where you can ask about stuff and actually go over it a bit to drive it home."
“Throughout this course, I've learned many things that I think are vital for learning about financial planning and management, especially in the future. .... Firstly, leadership was extremely important, especially because there were so few of us in the course after the first couple of weeks. Not only did leadership come to play when working with others, but while I was learning these concepts, it was important to place myself into a sort of leadership role that I picture myself eventually being in. I really like the idea of applying these ideas to the real world after we graduate and start managing our own finances, so I imagined myself as a powerful businesswoman with a stable financial life because of the endless things I had learned from my high school EPF class."
"This class was a great chance for me to work closely with my peers, but there were a lot of conflicts because our class was so diverse with each individual. It was hard to work with other sometimes when emotions and personal beliefs became more of the topic than what we were actually trying to accomplish, but that was merely the fault of all of the students and our lack for any sense of an attention span. I also learned patience when others were trying to express themselves before moving on because I saw how important sharing their opinions. Patience also played a role in learning new concepts, though, because I tend to understand bigger picture ideas, so when I was faced with very detailed information or concepts, it took me a lot longer to fully grasp the subject. I found myself very interested in learning about all of the things Dr. Lee was teaching because they seem so important to knowing about how to live comfortably in the real world, and since I realize the real world is approaching fast, I want to be anywhere but behind the curve when knowing about financial planning and management, so I took these ideas to heart and tries really hard to talk to my parents about what I learned."
Have a fabulous summer, everyone, and thanks for reading this year!
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