Student Completion Modules

Finding a way to successfully differentiate instruction is a challenge for every teacher.  As our secondary staff move to a model that will help ensure more individualized instruction and interventions, the challenge is finding tools that will help keep students moving forward with their own learning rather than waiting on peers who need more time to learn skills.  Hattie (2009) suggests that schools will continue to fail until they resolve the engagement problem.  When we consider providing interventions within the classroom, engagement is often a key issue that prevents teachers from doing what they know is best for students.  Teachers struggle to meet all students where they are and end up teaching to the middle thereby losing students who struggle and those who already know the content; or they attempt to give more individual attention to some students while others stray from learning tasks, either getting bored because they know it or frustrated because they don't get it.

After reading an article on Schoology Exchange that talked about using student completion to help students be responsible for their own learning, I decided that these rules may be a key tool for teachers.  Using Schoology folders with student completion rules could help individualize instruction and ensure students complete specific tasks all while providing teachers time to work with small groups.

I began by getting some peer assistance for refreshers on creating a class.  After being out of the classroom for 3 years, remembering all the ins and outs of this tool has proven to be challenging!  Once a trial class was created, I was able to create folders and activities within the folders.  

I was then able to assign an order in which students should complete the activities.  Knowing that we have several students who would rush to the screenshot before reading the information they needed to know, I made a rule that required students to open the general information activity first. 

Once I tried this out, I found that as long as students open the task, they can move to the next activity.  This doesn't ensure they have read the material.  I remember seeing something about embedding questions into activities, videos, or PowerPoint.  This is something I would like to investigate!  I could add another task, such as a structured response, to help ensure students have read the material, but I feel embedding questions within the learning material would be a better way to ensure students engage with all of the material.

After working with colleagues, I also found that I could assign different activities to students.  I can't do this with the entire folder, however.  I have to individually assign each item within the folder.  To differentiate for students, I could assign a specific folder of activities to certain students.  This will be labor intensive to start, but beneficial in class.  Also, the folders could be carried over to next year, thus reducing work in the future.  

The last thing I found out was that I can't assign one folder to be completed before another folder.  This is a bummer!  I would have to keep folders hidden or just heavily load folders with all the tasks I may want a particular group of students to complete.  

While I don't have a class with which to try all of this, I appreciate my colleagues who have helped me try it all on a small scale.  I feel this will all be very beneficial to teachers who will be adding interventions to their classrooms next year and am excited that I will be able to share this new learning with them!