PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity (Wicked Problem Project)

It is fair to say that the Holt High School mathematics department prides ourselves on using what we consider to be many of the latest technologies.  When I started the certificate sequence I was surprised to learn about just how few technologies we really do employ.  Our administrators are pushing us to continue to employ technologies as they learn of them.  An unfortunate side effect of this push is that we are using some technologies that seem good on paper, particularly the publisher’s marketing documents, and when we are asked to use them we quickly find that they are far from perfect, or even worse a hindrance to student learning.  Many focus on learning rote facts and procedures with little meaning attached.  That is what makes this project so important to me.  It was determined that next year I will be teaching a regular classroom part time and using the remainder of my time to work with struggling mathematics students in an “interventionist” role.  The requirements that were laid out for our department were that whatever program was created was to employ a blended (computer and in person) instruction model.  This represents the first time that the classroom teachers will be responsible for designing a course that must integrate technology.  So we stand at the edge of a very pressing problem (one might call it a wicked problem), the need to design a series of interventions that make regular use of technology.

The problem more narrowly defined is that the number of students who are failing our Algebra 1 course is too high.  Credit recovery courses that have been offered seem to only exacerbate the problem by allowing kids to feel that if they fail the course that they will be given multiple opportunities to retake it.   This leads to students simply giving up when it get the least bit hard.  Unfortunately the summer school and credit recovery courses that we offer are so watered down that we find students often fail the next class in the sequence and find themselves back in credit recovery.   We need to devise a way to keep kids on track for graduation and avoid having it become a lower track which is inescapable.  Enter the interventionist position.  My task is to identify struggling learners in a class and work with them to help them be successful in the class that they are currently enrolled in thereby allowing them to find and maintain success in the normal curriculum.  The current plan calls for students to be drawn form the entire population of Algebra 1 at high school, so the interventions need to be flexible enough to allow any student to enter and exit as needed.  This is considered a part (Tier 2) of the Response to Intervention (RtI) model which is currently being implemented through the Ingham ISD. 

            As it stands we have decided to make a series of modules to address issues common to our struggling students.  The goal of each module would be to give students multiple ways to access the material.  We have looked at various course management systems (CMS’s) as a means to deliver these modules but have been met with various obstacles.  Most of the CMS’s do not seem to allow for a easily viewable, accessible layout that is easy to jump in and out of.  This is particularly important because we do not want to have to “enroll” students in CMS course when the intent is to have them move in and out of our supervision.  I think that the most useful way to go is to make a website that is always accessible.  The idea would be to have the learning modules up on the site so that when we work with a student we are able to send them to the computer right away to work on a particular module that meets their needs.  Like the CMS’s a website also allows students to access needed materials outside of the class both during the school day and at home if they choose.  Another benefit of a website is that it is possible to add any type of material that is required.  There is no company that restricts what type of java app can be used with their software or on their servers.

            The proposed solution is to create a website and add modules as need be.  We would also continue to edit existing modules as needed.  There are issues to consider with regard to building a website, in that it requires someone with the ability to build it in order to maintain and alter it.  Each module is likely to contain other technologies within it such as blogs, StAIR’s, webquests and web 2.0 technologies.  A likely goal for the portion that will be completed during CEP 812 will be to set up the website and add one module complete module or portions of a few modules to it as completing the entire site in the time allotted for this course would be infeasible.