4712 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Meg Bates
  2. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  3. University of Chicago
  1. Cheryl Moran
  2. http://stemed.uchicago.edu/staff?data-target-rollout-thumb-id=cheryl-moran
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of Chicago
  1. Michelle Perry
  2. https://education.illinois.edu/faculty/michelle-perry
  3. Professor
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Understanding and Improving Learning from Online Mathematics Classroom Videos

NSF Awards: 1621253

2019 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades K-6, Adult learners

Having math teachers reflect on lesson video clips is a powerful professional learning practice. This project is exploring how to promote high-quality teacher reflection when teachers access lesson videos in the online space without a live facilitator. 

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Discussion from the 2019 STEM for All Video Showcase (21 posts)
  • Icon for: Cheryl Moran

    Cheryl Moran

    Co-Presenter
    May 12, 2019 | 09:57 p.m.

    Thank you for taking the time to watch our video. Our research team would be interested in your feedback, especially in regards to the following questions.

    1) What factors do you think could impact teacher engagement with and learning from classroom video?

    2) As a teacher, PD provider, or researcher, what do you take away from our results?

  • Icon for: Brian Drayton

    Brian Drayton

    Researcher
    May 13, 2019 | 10:19 a.m.

    Hi, 

       Thanks for an interesting presentation of work in progress.  As someone who's been around "teacher reflection online" projects for rather a long time, I am aware (I think) of the complexitiies of your challenge. 

    I was curious about a couple of things.  First, you ask how to support teacher learning and reflection "at scale." What do you have in mind by "at scale," and why do you think it's a need to be met?  I ask because it has seemed to me over the years that teachers (or anyone) are more likely to  'talk' in depth on line with people they have come to know in other contexts.

       Second, I was struck by the mention in your abstract about hoping to foster or support on line reflective exchange without a live facilitator.  What is the thinking behind this element of your "design problem"? It occurred to me as I watched the video that you are doing a fair amount of facilitation, unobtrusively, in the selection of prompting questions and video materials to view -- which I am sure helped spark the discussions!

     

  • Icon for: Michelle Perry

    Michelle Perry

    Co-Presenter
    Professor
    May 14, 2019 | 10:32 a.m.

    Hi Brian,

    These are important issues, so thanks for asking these questions!

    First, we are interested in "at scale" for several reasons, including pragmatic, equity, and economic reasons (and these often converge, or at least overlap).  For example, imagine that you're in a school district that cannot afford to send you to (an expensive) professional development (PD) training; with this website, available to all, anyone can access PD.  We don't want PD to be accessible only to those who can afford it.  Also, imagine that you've been to a PD training, but either the training or you missed something that you now know you need; with PD available asynchronously on the web, you can access what you need, when you need it.  By providing PD at scale, we hope to reach teachers who need and want PD, when they need it.

    Second, how nice of you to notice that the prompts and choice of video might act to facilitate reflective engagement with the videos on the website!  That is exactly we are hoping to accomplish through our experiment, by testing which prompts and conditions are related to teachers' highest reflective commentary.  However, this is done without a *live* facilitator.  Related to the reasons we are interested in having this PD at scale, if the PD is available online and asynchronously, and it works well to support teacher learning, more teachers should have access to these resources than if a live facilitator were necessary to guide the teachers through the PD.  We have learned a great deal from expert, live facilitators and we are experimenting to learn which of these features can be transformed to an online, asynchronous space. By understanding which features best support teacher learning on our website, we may even be able to inform in-person PD, by disseminating and sharing these features widely.  

    Again, thank you so much for your thoughtful questions!

    -Michelle

  • Icon for: Molly Stuhlsatz

    Molly Stuhlsatz

    Facilitator
    Research Scientist
    May 13, 2019 | 11:37 a.m.

    Congratulations on developing the platform and providing teachers with a great resource for viewing classroom video. Thanks for including some information about your research in the video.
    Does your platform provide teachers with a framework for analyzing the videos? Are there specific pedagogical moves that you hope teachers will recognize in the video and reflect in their responses?

  • Icon for: Meg Bates

    Meg Bates

    Lead Presenter
    May 13, 2019 | 02:03 p.m.

    Hi Molly!  Great question.  When we first launched the site back in 2011, we thought the best thing to do was provide such a "framework for analysis" through what we called the "framing information" posted as text alongside each classroom video. This information gave any needed context for the video and then posed 1-3 questions for the teachers to consider about the video.

    Our goal at the time was simply to move teachers towards noticing student thinking (what they appear to know, struggle with, etc.) and towards thinking about how teachers in the videos were responding to student thinking with their pedagogical moves.  This goal followed Miriam Sherin's work on teacher noticing and lots of PD research on the importance of teachers interpreting students' mathematical thinking.  We also had a goal of showcasing high-quality teaching practice around classroom discourse, student solution sharing, multiple representations of mathematical concepts, and so forth.

    As we get the results in from this study, we have been redesigning the site based on our data. A big project for us is to rewrite all of the framing information on the site to match the questions we found to be most effective in the study.  Hope this makes sense! Thanks for watching our video!

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Molly Stuhlsatz
  • Icon for: Daniel Capps

    Daniel Capps

    Facilitator
    Associate Professor
    May 13, 2019 | 12:20 p.m.

    Hi Cheryl and colleagues. In response to your question on teacher engagement, I was wondering if you had considered using teachers own work (i.e., videos of their teaching and student work) on this platform? If so, what would it look like?  

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Molly Stuhlsatz
  • Icon for: Cheryl Moran

    Cheryl Moran

    Co-Presenter
    May 13, 2019 | 02:18 p.m.

    Hi Daniel,

    Thank you for watching our video and asking such a great question.

    We agree it is great when teachers can reflect on their own practice, not just others' practices, although we believe in judicious use of both in PD. We do allow teachers to share resources with the site. Currently, teachers mostly share instructional tools such as visual organizers, but we are open to resources like video and student work if the proper permissions are in place. As of yet, we do not have a ton of teacher-shared resources of that nature, although the teachers who we film for the site are also members of the site and may access their own videos from time to time.

    We have conducted a few "video clubs" with teachers using materials from the site. In those clubs, we started by reflecting on site videos but eventually had teachers in the clubs share their own videos to reflect on. We definitely look forward to doing more of this. 

    Again, thanks for the great question.

    Cheryl

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Molly Stuhlsatz
  • Icon for: Michelle Perry

    Michelle Perry

    Co-Presenter
    Professor
    May 13, 2019 | 01:59 p.m.

    Hi Brian,

    These are important issues, so thanks for asking these questions!

    First, we are interested in "at scale" for several reasons, including pragmatic, equity, and economic reasons (and these often converge, or at least overlap).  For example, imagine that you're in a school district that cannot afford to send you to (an expensive) professional development (PD) training; with this website, available to all, anyone can access PD.  We don't want PD to be accessible only to those who can afford it.  Also, imagine that you've been to a PD training, but either the training or you missed something that you now know you need; with PD available asynchronously on the web, you can access what you need, when you need it.  By providing PD at scale, we hope to reach teachers who need and want PD, when they need it.

    Second, how nice of you to notice that the prompts and choice of video might act to facilitate reflective engagement with the videos on the website!  That is exactly we are hoping to accomplish through our experiment, by testing which prompts and conditions are related to teachers' highest reflective commentary.  However, this is done without a *live* facilitator.  Related to the reasons we are interested in having this PD at scale, if the PD is available online and asynchronously, and it works well to support teacher learning, more teachers should have access to these resources than if a live facilitator were necessary to guide the teachers through the PD.  We have learned a great deal from expert, live facilitators and we are experimenting to learn which of these features can be transformed to an online, asynchronous space. By understanding which features best support teacher learning on our website, we may even be able to inform in-person PD, by disseminating and sharing these features widely.  

    Again, thank you so much for your thoughtful questions!

    -Michelle

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Molly Stuhlsatz
  • Jennifer Donais

    K-12 Teacher
    May 14, 2019 | 09:55 a.m.

    Thanks for the video! I love this idea and as a teacher would love to see it used in schools for PLCs and PD.  

  • Icon for: Michelle Perry

    Michelle Perry

    Co-Presenter
    Professor
    May 14, 2019 | 10:33 a.m.

    Sorry for submitting this as a post, rather than as a reply to Brian Drayton's question!

  • Icon for: Courtney Arthur

    Courtney Arthur

    Facilitator
    Senior Curriculum and Instruction Designer
    May 14, 2019 | 11:57 a.m.

    Thank you for sharing your work! What a great resource to have as a teacher. As someone who is currently working on an online platform for teacher professional development, I am curious about a teacher's participation in the asynchronous portion. Have you found a platform and/or strategies that help to increase this?

  • Icon for: Cheryl Moran

    Cheryl Moran

    Co-Presenter
    May 17, 2019 | 05:20 p.m.

    Courtney,

    See my response below to you and Sandy.

    Cheryl

  • Icon for: Cathy Carroll

    Cathy Carroll

    Researcher
    May 14, 2019 | 01:38 p.m.

    Thanks for sharing your video. I agree that well-articulated prompts are key to supporting teacher engagement with and learning from video. Over years of face-to-face work, we've been able to get better and better and crafting these prompts. Like yours, our project of converting face-to-face materials for use asynchronously on-line offers the challenge and the opportunity to work more on enhancing the quality of the prompts to focus interaction and learning.

  • Icon for: Sandy Wilborn

    Sandy Wilborn

    Director of Programs
    May 15, 2019 | 03:27 p.m.

    Thank you for sharing your video!  This is very interesting as we are doing similar work.  In our US Dept of Ed i3 project, the Rural Math Innovation Network (RMIN), a group of 30 Pre-Algebra and Algebra I teachers in rural Virginia are collaborating in a virtual network. The are working with peers to create lesson plans that incorporate growth mindset and self-efficacy in mathematics. When the lesson is taught, teachers video record themselves and share those videos with peers to observe and provide constructive feedback.

    We are using a platform by the name of Torsh Talent.  What is the name of the platform you are using?  I would be interested in taking a look at it to see how it works compared to what we use.

    Please take a look at our video "If You Give a Teacher a Network" to learn about what we are doing.

  • Icon for: Cheryl Moran

    Cheryl Moran

    Co-Presenter
    May 17, 2019 | 05:20 p.m.

    Sandy,

    See my response below to you and Courtney.

    Cheryl

  • Icon for: Zen Borys

    Zen Borys

    Researcher
    May 16, 2019 | 12:25 a.m.

     This is great!  Thanks for sharing.  I also love the idea promoting meaningful reflections.  I'm curious about the teachers' use patterns of the site.  For example, do teachers primarily visit for themselves and not interact with other users versus teachers contributing to discussion boards and actively engaging with site content and other users.  I also found myself wondering if teachers interact with each other more/less/same after reflecting.  It seems there could be a lot of potential for rich discussion with micro-groups of teachers who watched the same video within a certain time frame.  This interaction with other teachers about the videos/their reflections could push teachers to reflect more.  What a great project!  

  • Icon for: Cheryl Moran

    Cheryl Moran

    Co-Presenter
    May 16, 2019 | 04:19 p.m.

    Hi Zen,

    Thank you for watching our video. Regarding your query, a highly used feature on our site is the discussion board. Teachers frequently write in with questions for other teachers and/or the curriculum developers to address. Teachers also frequently download "teacher shared" resources.  Teachers occasionally do watch the videos, but rarely comment on them. It is our hope that with this project, we will determine which prompts engage teachers enough to engage in rich discussion about the videos.

    Cheryl

  • Icon for: Molly Malone

    Molly Malone

    Informal Educator
    May 16, 2019 | 02:00 p.m.

    Very interesting work- thanks for sharing! The flexibility of asynchronous PD is very valuable. However, there are a number of teacher-learners who more deeply engage in PD when a time and place has been set aside to do so. Have you tried a "hybrid" approach where live facilitators guide participants through your online model?

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Kara Suzuka
  • Icon for: Cheryl Moran

    Cheryl Moran

    Co-Presenter
    May 17, 2019 | 06:50 a.m.

    Hi Molly,

    Thanks for viewing our video. We agree that the flexibility of asynchronous PD is valuable. We have not tried a "hybrid" approach but we do hope to do so in the near future.

    Cheryl

  • Icon for: Cheryl Moran

    Cheryl Moran

    Co-Presenter
    May 17, 2019 | 04:58 p.m.

    Hi Sandy and Courtney,

    Thank you for viewing our video.  We are glad you find our work interesting.  In regards to your platform question, we have created our own platform for our VLC. We worked closely with developers in our center to do this. Please take a look at it here. You will need to join the site to have full access to our resources and discussions. There is no fee to do this. 

    Regarding member usage, our members regularly use the discussion boards and frequently download different “teacher shared” resources. The discussions generally center around curriculum/content issues. Teachers watch the videos for different reasons including to watch a model lesson, to learn a game, learn math content, etc. Teachers rarely engage in rich discussion around the video. We are hoping that with this project we will find out which prompts push teachers to engage in rich discussions. 

    To encourage teachers to remain an active site user, each time a new discussion post, or new resource is added, teachers receive an update.  If nothing is posted, a regular update goes out once a week.

     

    Cheryl

  • Icon for: Kara Suzuka

    Kara Suzuka

    Assistant Specialist
    May 20, 2019 | 05:10 p.m.

    One thought I have about factors that might impact teacher engagement with and learning from the videos is a hypothesis that, like many other types of professional learning, the ability to learn from videos might itself be something to be learned. So, to that end, I have a couple questions (not necessarily for you to answer but just ones that were raised for me as I watched your video and considered your discussion question):

    • What sorts of training, practice, background experiences did the teachers who participated in your experiment have?  Did that make a difference?
    • What kinds of professional learning help prepare teachers to watch and learn from classroom videos? (Based on some interviews my colleagues and I did, we found that teacher educators and professional developer do quite a bit of work to prepare teachers to watch, discuss, and learn from videos — however, I’m not sure what sorts of things really make a difference). What might this look like in an online, asynchronous setting?

    Other things your video and this discussion sparked for me:

    • I’m intrigued by Meg’s comments about how your findings are guiding a rewrite of the prompts on VLC — can you provide an example of this the changes you are making?  A before and after? Or perhaps how your findings led to one change? (I know I will probably have to wait for the paper but it doesn’t hurt to ask :)
    • Have you considered creating a mini-course or activity with your videos that helps teachers develop some facet of their practice (perhaps with “Noticing” or identifying [insert something] in student talk? I’ve often longed for small video-based learning opportunities that would help me get better at some practice by engaging with the videos.... (Meg’s description of the early goals for VLC re-surfaced this old longing...)

    Thanks for the very generative video and discussion here — as always, you do such important and interesting work that gets me thinking...!

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.