Grilly Chem’s Learning Experiment
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By Colleen Worrell, Secondary Technology Integration Coordinator
Chemistry teacher Devon Grilly decided to try something new this semester. Her experiment was less about beakers and solutions, and more about how to best help students learn chemistry. With the goal of giving students more voice and choice in their learning, Ms. Grilly used the school’s digital learning management system, Moodle, to design a self-paced, mastery based learning environment. While everyone worked toward common learning goals and assessments, students had a variety of resources, tasks, and options for how they could learn and master the material in each unit.
What inspired this change in approach? Ms. Grilly states, “So much emphasis is being made these days on finding ‘THE way’ to teach students, and what are the teachers doing to help all students learn, that we’ve left the most important ingredient out of the equation: the students themselves.” In the past, she admits that teaching CP level Introduction to Chemistry was often a daily struggle. Ms. Grilly notes, “It felt like I was trying to pull a large boulder up a steep hill.” With the new approach, she explains, “I found that when I let go of the cajoling and pulling, the students were able to take responsibility for their own learning. The hardest part was often standing back and letting them just ‘be,” giving them space to make their own meaning and trusting that if they were in need of help that they would ask me.”
During my multiple visits to Grilly Chem I was able to to see this approach in action. The course would start with a short video clip related to the learning for that day, which helped to engage student interest and shift their attention to the topic at hand. Sometimes Ms. Grilly would kick off class with a short lecture or discussion; other times she would give them a quick reminder of learning goals and daily tasks, and students would start right in on where they left off in the previous class session.
At all my visits I was impressed by student’s eagerness to learn. During a unit the periodic table, a student raised his hand to ask what was the strongest substance. After Ms. Grilly shared the answer, two of the students took the opportunity to delve deeper by going “lids up” on their laptops and researching information on graphene; once they found information, they again raised their hands and shared the information they discovered with class.
Every time I visited I was able to observe and talk with students as they worked at their own pace on learning activities and tasks. During another class, students worked on POGILS (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning activities) to learn about ionic bonding. They were given the option of working on their own or teaming up with another student or two. One group of students I observed jumped right into this, helping each other navigate to the right spot in their online Moodle course and then carefully explaining why their data worked a certain way.
As students collaborated on their assignment, Ms. Grilly was able to circulate around the room and act as facilitator in some cases, or provide one-on-one reteaching of content in others. In survey feedback, one student remarked that she enjoyed the format of the course because ““it helped me learn things my way.”
Ms. Grilly admits that while self-paced learning works well for a majority of her students, other students struggled with the self-directed, student-centered approach of her course. Some of it comes down to different students’ learning styles and learning challenges. Yet motivation is also key. If the student doesn’t own and take responsibility for their learning, it’s tough for them to succeed in a competency-based learning environment. When I asked a group of students if working at their own pace with the help of their peers can be counterproductive one student responded, “Sure, if you let it. But we don’t want to fail so we team up with kids who help us, not distract us.”
Overall, students have enjoyed this approach. In survey feedback, the majority of students agree that Ms. Grilly’s course encouraged them to be responsible and helped them to learn how to make decisions that would help them learn. The variety of activities and the freedom to make choices in how they learn was also of high value to students in Ms. Grilly’s Chem course.
So what are the results of this experiment? Ms. Grilly notes, “My students felt more ownership over their learning … and more confidence in their ability to learn. If the only thing they got from this experience was that metacognition, learning how to learn, then that’s more than I could ever have hoped for. It has always been my dream from the moment I began my career to find a way to somehow pass on my love of learning and the desire to be a lifelong learner. I think for some of my students this semester, perhaps I was able to show them the doorway to this. It is up to them to open it. Will this work in all classrooms for all teachers? Is this ‘THE way’? No, I don’t think so. For me, for this course, and maybe others, it seems to fit and I will definitely do it again.”
