I’ve decided that I’m going to try it again this year, but with some of the modifications. We’ll see where that brings us…

With learning and especially with testing the level of understanding it is always difficult to predict all the variables involved. This really answers my question. Thanks again!

Thanks for the great comment and question!

I think that the fact that a number of the weaker students excelled while some of the stronger students flopped actually makes some sense. What caused students to succeed or flop in this project doesn’t easily boil down to students who “get it” and students who don’t.

Some of the stronger students “get” why they’re doing what they’re doing, but they’ve never been taught how to explain it. So I would argue that they aren’t just doing a procedure without knowing why… they just haven’t been taught how to explain why. They went into the project thinking that it would be very easy, because they “get” the topic, and so they didn’t put time or effort into thinking about how they would teach it.

The weaker students who excelled tended to choose the easier or mid-level topics, but they really tended to focus on the “teaching” part — how to make a good video. So they would come to me and we would talk about their video script and talk through what would make it really effective, what little things they might want to include (“watch out here! many students might think X, but really Y happens…”), etc. And so the students who focused on that tended to do well.

In my opinion, success and failure in this project don’t correspond neatly to understanding their topics well. It’s a different type of project. Its comes out of something more complicated: being able to explain a topic, about mathematical communication. Of course to do this well, you need to understand the topic well conceptually (and why you’re making each step), but importantly, you have to have a whole host of other skills.

*good smartboard technique
*a solid “lesson plan” with a flow
*an understanding of how the audience thinks
*a good way to articulate mathematical ideas

This is something I didn’t realize myself going into the project (!), and so next year, I’m going try to integrate those skills into my classes.

Does this answer your question?
Always,
Sam

I have a question though: My hypotheses was that students will learn the subject they’re explaining better because a good explaination needs a more thorough insight in the matter than just plainly reproducing a calculation or listening to the teacher.

But then one of our readers commented (and I think he has a point here) this could not be valid hypothesis because “weaker students excelled (..), while stronger students just flopped”. He said that if this was the case this project “outs” the better students as being actually not that good and vice versa.

What do you think about this discussion? Or do you maybe have a practical explanation of why this has happened?

Thanks for sharing!