All right, hi, everybody.
I am very pleased to introduce this session and this speaker, Jania Jones.
With her permission, I'm going to read a sentence or two from her bio at the FSCJ
training and organizational development.
Professor Jania Jones has been a professor of adult education, mathematics at Florida
State College at Jacksonville for the past five and a half years.
A continuing contract recipient, Jania has served as the adult education department
and the college community since she first began.
Jania proudly served her college as the downtown campus representative for UFF,
your faculty union, a downtown campus senator for the faculty senate,
a member of the curriculum committee, faculty advisor for the adult studies club
and chair of the safety and security committee.
In 2017, Jania won the exemplary practice of the year award for the Association of
Florida's Colleges Commission on Workforce, Adult and Continuing Education.
I will hand the floor over to Jania, take it away.
Thank you very much.
That needs to be updated.
I'm actually now not only downtown campus, I'm the union vice president now.
They don't know what they were voting for, but they got it.
But thank you so much all for having me.
I just wanted to share a few wonderful tools.
My school, where I work, FSCJ, Florida State College at Jacksonville,
is actually using two separate tools right now.
And so I kind of feel like the self-selected ambassador for Big Blue Button
in a world of people who all want to go to the other product.
So I feel like I am constantly talking about some of the features I'm going to
share with you today, but there are so many others.
But before we begin, and this is actually a little trick I learned from Fred.
Before we begin, I'm curious if anybody remembers my name.
Can you please on your screen respond if you remember?
So one of my favorite things to do is to sneak in these lovely little polls here.
This is the little trick where you change the color.
There's another trick where you can kind of make it super teeny tiny.
And then the writing will be on the screen, but you can't see it.
And another thing that I like to do.
Ah, so we had a lot of correct answers.
My name is actually Jania Smart Slides.
Thank you.
So it was the correct answer here was Smart.
And I am thrilled to be here to discuss formative assessment a little bit with you.
That's sort of the thing that I enjoy discussing the most in my role
in faculty development at FSCJ.
And we're going to participate in some of the tools involving the whiteboard.
Given the time, I will just kind of explain a couple of things as well.
The results have never looked like that on the slide for me before.
I have no idea why I did it just now.
When I do this in my class, it's a small box in the bottom right-hand corner.
I don't know what just happened right now.
But anyway, I want to kind of give you, you know, give you a little bit
of preparation so that you too can have opportunities to wow your students.
I want to make sure that you have some, you know, tools in your tool belt,
so to speak, so that when you're using Big Blue Button in your live conferences,
you have ways that you're able to monitor student learning during those lessons.
I also want to make sure that you have ways to empower those students
who may not want to speak up in class as often as other students.
They don't get to have, as they say, a back seat in the class or a seat in the back
of the class where they hide in a live virtual class.
So we want to provide tools to give those students voice.
And we want to give them opportunities to share because they have valuable input
to contribute to the discussions in your classes as well.
And we want to make sure that we're monitoring them as they are reaching
toward meeting their learning goals.
So based on what you already know, can you put a check mark in the box of what,
which of these characteristics you feel are characteristics of formative assessment?
So one of the things that I don't have in that bio online is I teach in a variety
of areas across our college on credit and on credit side.
I teach in adult education primarily as the math for the adult basic education,
adult secondary education, which is our high school equivalency program.
We use the GED test and also in our adult high school math.
I also teach in our ESOL as a wonderful, I love teaching the ESOL students
because first of all, they never bother to learn my name.
They just call me teacher the whole time, which I think is adorable.
And they are very interactive, but I also have opportunities to teach
in our first year experience program on the college credit side.
And one of the things that I've noticed particularly among my college credit
students is that having opportunities for them to write on the whiteboard
is always just so much fun because it's always like a race.
One of the things that we'll do, I'll show you a little bit,
or maybe I won't because I don't have privileges to do so,
but I like to have them write on the whiteboard.
I would have them do screenshots until recently.
Now when you send students into breakout rooms,
you don't have to make them do a screenshot.
You can just save it, which is beautiful because it just took a step away
from what I was having my students do in my class.
But giving them opportunities to respond,
it's better than being in a face-to-face class this way
because they can respond on the board.
They don't even have to get up to do it.
So yes, all of these are characteristics of formative assessment.
Formative assessment does need to be something that you plan ahead.
As you can tell from the examples that I've provided throughout
and some of the things that you'll see as we move further on,
these are things that kind of need to already be in your slides
before you begin your class because if they're not already there,
then there's nowhere for your students to actually participate.
So it has to be something that is planned in advance,
and it should be ongoing and occurring during your class.
Formative assessment is something that happens at the end.
That's summative assessment.
We want to make sure that it's something that's low stakes.
If you answer incorrectly on here and you don't check the correct box,
you don't fail the class.
It's really great because you get an opportunity to check,
hey, am I in the right place in the right direction
or do I need to maybe change course a little bit?
As an instructor, it gives you an opportunity
to monitor the learning of the students.
That way, you don't have to sit at home wondering
while you're planning lessons, should I be moving on to something
or should I be going back to reteach something
that students didn't understand?
If you're continuing on with formative assessment
throughout those lessons, you already know.
The other thing is the benefit for students
because they have immediate feedback
on where they stand in their understanding.
So if I think I know something, but then I'm answering incorrectly
in a formative assessment in my class, guess what?
I probably don't know that thing as well as I thought I did.
And now as a student, I know where I need a little bit of work.
I maybe need to reread some things, work with a tutor,
get extra help from a classmate, review some notes or whatever.
And it's easy.
You don't see me breaking a sweat here.
Actually, I am a little warm, but that's something else.
But it's easy to do.
So another tool, one of the other tools that I use is brainstorming.
And I like to tell students that when you are in our class time
that all ideas are great ideas.
There's no bad ideas.
So when we are brainstorming, students again have this opportunity.
Now, the first couple of times you do this,
you will have to show students how to use the typing option
because if you don't, then what you're going to get
is them trying to write letters and words with the mouse
and it's going to be unreadable.
And we don't want to create something in our classes
that is not beneficial to students.
So you want to make sure that you give them
a bit of a tutorial at the beginning,
maybe the first day of class or the second day of class.
I don't usually do it the first day.
I usually do it maybe the second or third.
And give them a tutorial on how to type on their slides.
If you look on the toolbar, there is a ...
I think I had a question. I just talked over someone.
There is a letter T.
And so if I wanted to have students raise their hand,
I could have them raise their hand to share an idea.
And if I have maybe two or three students at a time,
then I could provide opportunities
for two or three students at a time
to come and type, come to the board.
I say come to the board because I'm used
to being in a face-to-face class.
But to come to the board and type.
So for example, if I wanted to,
I could right now have Fred and Erin come,
air quotes, to the board and give us some ideas of ways
that they have heard about other people
using formative assessment in their classes
on Big Blue Button.
And if you want to,
another thing is you could randomly select someone
and say, next I want Kurt to also come to the board.
And share some ideas that you may have heard about as well.
And I'm not giving whiteboard access
to everybody all at one time.
I'm only giving access to the people as I call on them.
And then you don't have sort of that mad rush
and the competition of everybody writing at once
that we had a moment ago when everybody had access.
So I'm just going to the names of the people.
Again, I could randomly select another person
and maybe Joni has some ideas to share as well.
And just give access to that one
or those two or three people.
Yes.
And this tool, the toolbar is on the right-hand side
near where you see my purple name tag over
on the screen.
And that toolbar becomes available to you
when you're given whiteboard access.
And you know what's great is I could also take it away.
Well, if I've seen that Kurt and Joni
have already shared their answers,
I could just remove their whiteboard access.
And then now I could give access to someone else.
And again, we no longer have a whole lot of people
at the board at once.
If you think about it in terms of like
your physical classroom, yes.
If you think of it in terms of your physical classroom,
you don't want 20 people at the board at one time.
Ideally, maybe two.
I teach math.
And so when I have students come to the board
for math problems and practice,
I don't want 20 people
because I don't want 20 people talking at once.
So if I have maybe two groups,
one group is on one side of the board,
one group is on the other side.
You have something similar in the options
on the blue button with limiting the number
of people that you have.
Another option, again, I told you I teach ESOL
and a lot of that has to do with writing,
is you can give students text
and provide opportunities for them
to make corrections or edits on that screen.
This is a good thing.
It's not just something you could do for,
in this case, a writing assignment.
It's something that you could do even in my math classes.
I could give them six problems.
Each group goes back into their small breakout.
They make you recommendations
of what they think the answer is.
It's not always gonna be right.
And then when they come back,
they can have one person designated to justify that answer
and you don't have all four people in the group
having to talk in class.
So once again, they are gonna talk some
probably when they get in their small group,
but what I have found is even students
who don't like to talk in front of the entire class,
you may be more comfortable talking
with three other people than you are with 24.
So it's a little bit more comfortable, I have found.
And if I can take possibly just two minutes,
I don't wanna take too much time to do this.
I would love for all of you to take just a moment
and just think about what are some of these words,
circle the words in this text
that maybe don't look so quite right to you.
And although this is going to tell you
at the top of the screen that you have 15 minutes,
I guarantee you,
Janiya Jones is not about to give you 15 minutes
to work on this assignment,
but I will definitely be yanking you out in just a moment.
Make changes and come back and cheer them.
All right, we're back.
And we're back.
Oh, goodness.
Okay, so one of the really cool things that was added,
a recent feature, is that now instead of having students
make a screenshot before they leave their breakout rooms,
which sometimes, let's be honest,
they would forget to do even, I would,
and this is something that is just absolutely insane.
And when I say it, you're gonna think,
I'm gonna be insane, and when I say it,
you're gonna think I'm a crazy person.
But when I teach my classes, I teach with headphones,
and I open every single breakout room.
Because as a math teacher, even though I can share audio,
that's not enough.
I have to see what students are doing.
So I can literally hear 10 groups talking at one time.
And when students ask questions,
I have to somehow tell my brain
to only listen to this one voice
and only respond to this one voice
while nine other voices are happening in my ears
at the same time.
So it's a really great time teaching
with multiple groups going at the same time.
But I don't recommend that.
I know that for others, they will kind of float,
if you will, from one group to the next,
joining in rooms to check on students.
You can also choose to join in audio.
Having a conversation, if you do have a student
who simply does not want to talk
in a group with anyone else,
you always have the option to just stick that student
in a room by themself.
That, by the way, when I, during COVID,
was doing my faux proctored exams is exactly what I did.
Whenever my students did their exams,
I would put each student in their own breakout room,
and I would do two sessions to 10 students at this time.
You have this much time to do the test,
and I would put 10 students at this time,
everybody in your own room,
and then I would have 10 rooms open,
because it's a test.
They're not supposed to be in there talking anyway.
But if a student does have a question,
and of course I keep myself on mute and listen only mode,
and so I can always go in and respond
when they have questions.
But it was a really great solution.
It's great, it's a little weird on the screen
to have all the little windows,
if you have students who simply
do not wanna talk to anybody else.
So as you can see, you all had opportunities to go in.
You were all looking at that same screen
and had the option, kind of like working
on a collaborative worksheet in a classroom.
You were able to go through
and find where those misspelled words are.
I promise you that was intentional,
and I'm not just a terrible speller
just because I'm a math teacher.
I told you, I teach English too.
And I also have grammar at least,
so I would never have made those mistakes of my own.
Now let's look at another way
that I use formative assessment.
So discussion and debate.
This is something that I,
it depends on how much chaos you like.
This is something else I would do in a breakout
with a little bit larger group than what you had before.
So you might have probably five or six people
because you wanna have a variety of opinions,
and you wanna have a variety of input.
And again, I told you,
I teach within our first year experience program.
So you can have a lot of different discussions
or debates on different topics.
And I just put up a SWOT analysis
on formative assessments that we could do
in a breakout room as an example,
but really any tool could be used here.
And this is literally just a table that I made.
I think it's a one, two, three,
three by three table that I made.
And then I just changed the color.
That the top left is the same color as the background.
It's not a fancy tool.
It's nothing fancy, okay?
It's just Google Sides.
So if you want it to have a discussion again,
since there has to be a level of planning in advance,
make sure that whatever that debate topic is,
you have maybe a section for students
to list pros and cons,
or you have a section if it's a discussion topic
for each of those individual subtopics listed there
so students can report that information.
And let me just say,
and I feel like I'm slamming all the other products today,
but I used to use another product, DramBoard,
for this prior to some of the changes that have happened.
And this has been just phenomenal to have this whiteboard
that goes into a breakout room of students
when they leave the big classroom
that they can respond on
and not having to trust
that they'll follow another outside link
and go to another application.
So based on what we've talked about so far,
that's agreed that formative assessments
are all of the following except,
pick one, just one.
I'm going to disregard that one response.
Five, four, three, two, one.
Okay, I got another one I don't like.
I think we can all,
except those two people,
agree that formative assessments are fun and engaging
and easy to do.
They are not unnecessary.
We definitely need to keep track of where our students are
as we progress through our lessons.
And how likely, and this is another,
so quizzes and polls is one way,
but also we could do like a Likert scale.
So how likely are you to implement at least one
of these strategies in your next class?
They're super easy, right?
Even I can do it.
And I don't sit still long enough
to learn complicated stuff.
Five, four, three, two, one.
Excellent, thank you.
Oh, I did that again.
I don't know, I don't know.
So does anybody have any questions?
This is another really great tool
that was recently added is this ability
to answer questions with open response.
It doesn't have to be a multiple choice,
true, false question anymore.
You could just say whatever you wanna say within reason.
This is a great tool, by the way,
if any of you ever do like a wellness check
at the beginning and sort of gauge where your students
are, this is a great way of doing that.
And you don't have to publish the poll.
You can keep that information to yourself
if you wanna check on a student individually
and just make sure that they're in a position
where they're able to learn.
We all know about Maslow, right?
If someone is dealing with some horrible,
horrible thing at home,
they're not really listening to what you have to say.
It depends, so the question that I received is
how much time do students spend in breakouts?
One of the things that I always kind of assume
is that if it takes me five minutes,
it takes students 10.
So I go through all of the activities
that I give my students and I usually just get a gauge,
just kind of gauge what the time is it takes me to finish
and whatever that time is, I usually just double it.
The other thing to remember is you can always increase
the amount of time in a breakout room
once students are in the breakout rooms.
I don't hesitate to eliminate assignments.
I always over plan in my classes
and even though it might be a 75 minute class,
I usually have like two hours,
almost two hours worth of stuff planned.
The other thing I wanted to mention
that has nothing to do with this presentation,
I live in Florida and it rains here quite frequently.
We had a storm the other day
while my students were in the middle of a video
that I had shown through Big Blue Button.
My video completely stopped
and I began to apologize to the students to say,
I'm sorry that the video's not playing.
I don't know what's going on,
but I'll just share the link with you.
And my students said, the video is still playing.
So somehow once you begin a video in Big Blue Button,
even if it stops, like the power goes out
or the internet goes out on your end,
it will continue to play for students,
which I thought was super cool.
I sent that information to our EdTech person
and she had no idea.
Breakout room work to whole class.
Yes, so you do get those files
that you are given in this plus sign.
And oh, normally I do, I don't have it now,
but normally when your students come back,
if you click on the plus sign,
the files from when your students
were in the breakout rooms are available
and then you can share that work that they did
in the breakout rooms with the entire class.
The other thing is tell students
don't necessarily put their names on it,
then it can be anonymous when you share what they did,
what their work was.
So is there any other functions to illustrate?
There are probably 20,000 functions in Big Blue Button
that I don't know about.
I am a self-taught user of Big Blue Button
and unfortunately I use my piecemeal education
to teach my teachers at my institution.
So they have probably worse information than I do.
Is, okay, how to encode the open question on slide?
Just ask a question.
I literally just typed here, do you have any questions?
And magically it gives me the option to display
opening my Q&A panel for,
or my polling panel for typed response.
How many can you teach interactively online?
Our class limits, we set our class limits in curriculum
and I find it difficult to teach anything
more than 24 people at a time.
So in my classes, my academic classes,
I usually don't have more than 24.
Every now and then I will have a couple of people
sneak in.
One thing, when I do professional development workshops,
depending on the workshop,
we could have probably 50 or 60 people,
but that's usually,
I usually don't use as many of these tools there
because in our professional development workshops at FSCJ,
the chat doesn't stop.
So it is like a,
I do an activity in my class called Waterfall
where students have to type a response in the chat
and then everybody hits enter at the same time.
Well, that is what it feels like teaching PD at FSCJ
with our teachers.
There's constant questions nonstop
the whole time that you're talking.
And so I don't include as many opportunities
for the stoppages that we get
when we're asking these formative assessment type questions
because I know that those questions
are just gonna keep flowing nonstop.
I wanna just also mention that
while you guys were in breakout rooms,
I was given permission to go over,
so don't get mad at me.
I don't have any other questions at this time,
so I do wanna thank you all
for listening to me ramble for the last half hour.
If you wanna get in touch with me,
here is my contact information.
And also I do receive messages by carrier pigeon
if you have one, so send those my way.
It was my pleasure to be here with you all today.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me.
Our team actually is always available,
academy at fscj.edu.
I can put that in the chat as well.
Anybody, any of us could really answer those questions
even though admittedly,
I'm the only one on our leadership team
who answers email who is still using this particular.
I'm telling you, I have to get my people on this side.
They're all using that other conference saying software.
I think we got ideas.
Janaya, this has been really good.
It's always great to see the work that we've done
reflected back at us and some of the things
like bringing content back from breakout rooms,
visual, multi-user whiteboard,
visual assessments, smart slides, it's all there.
And you gave really good examples of how using it.
So thank you again, kind of inspires us
to keep doing more of what we're doing.
And that was a really good overview
of all the stuff that you were using.
Thanks very much.
I hope someone can use some of these at least.
For sure.