One-on-One Meetings: Update

I have been continuing doing one-on-one student meetings, and I have some new thoughts.

First, Lew Ludwig spoke at my school last weekend about AI. We are going to have to shift to more stuff like one-on-one student meetings if we want to be confident that we know what students can do. He handwrote a calculus limit on a Post-It, uploaded it to ChatGPT, and ChatGPT solved it from the scanned photograph.

Second, I rebranded these “Teaching Quizzes” this semester for my elementary education class. I instruct them to plan for the quizzes as if they were teaching the material as a teacher. This has improved their preparation since last semester. I still give them a lot of grace to think through the problems (it isn’t as polished as it should be if they were actually teaching).

Finally, the meetings still take a lot of time. Because of this, I started adding days in class where the students practice for the Teaching Quizzes. This allows me to intentionally look for students who already understand it, and I can give them credit for having done it in class. This frees up my day, since then I don’t have to meet with them outside of class.

Giving them credit in class is not perfect—I am certain that I miss some great explanations and pass some iffy ones, but it is an improvement. Also, the iffy ones that I pass are probably “good enough”—the standard should be “Would the student learn a significant amount by having a one-on-one meeting with me?” I think that I am holding to this standard well—I might pass a student who is just missing a detail or two that I could help with during a Teaching Quiz, but it is usually not worth the time.

I still miss some good explanations, although I have another improvement for that: use my awesome course assistant to help with this. He is sharp and responsible, and I trust him.

To help more students pass, I started (1) telling them that they might pass out of their Teaching Quiz in class on the practice day prior and (2) publishing a video prior to the practice day on exactly what to do. Some of the students are clearly studying to take advantage of this, which is increasing the number of students who are passing during these practice days.

Finally, there is an additional benefit to passing more students during practice days: it allows me to better us my out-of-class time. I am only giving students 15 minutes for a Teaching Quiz, since that amount leads to roughly six hours of Teaching Quizzes per class (I typically have about 25 students). Instead of working with a solid student for 15 minutes to bring them from a 9.1 to a 9.3 (on some scale out of 10), I can use that 15 minutes to help a different student for 30 minutes to bring them from a 4.7 to a 8.3 (Note: I don’t actually have a 10-point scale. I am making up the numbers as I type them). I can do more good for those who need more help, and I think it is better to give 15 additional minutes to a struggling student than to give 15 minutes to a student who mostly gets it.

Tags: AI, Oral Exams