Anyone who is good at something was, at first, terrible at it. I have no proof of it; but to me, this seems to be logically true. No one is born knowing anything (apart from knowing that chocolate tastes good, perhaps); and everything we do is either the result of a combination of previous experiences, or more fundamentally, the process of being bad at something and then learning what went wrong and improving. Sometimes it’s an iterative process; other times, things snap together quickly.
Unfortunately, not everyone is brilliant at everything straight away. And, while there is an argument for Darwinism in academia, there’s also an argument to encourage as many people as possible to succeed. The world is full of scientific and political challenges that require scientific understanding; and it seems the days of one Einstein-esque figure being able to come up with a single powerful idea that changes everything is over—if it ever truly existed. The future appears to be a collaboration between many people, which means we need people to understand many things at varying levels, including the STEM subject you’re teaching, as well as students who are struggling with the assessments you’ve given them. Just because someone is behind the curve, it doesn’t mean they won’t be leading in the future.
Möbius helps you help your students
We all remember that one teacher or lecturer who went above and beyond for us at some point in our academic career. But, in an age where class sizes are exploding and teaching resources are shrinking, how can we help students in a way that lets us concentrate our efforts on those who truly need us to be like the teacher or lecturer who went above and beyond for us?
Chances are, if you’re reading this article, you’re already a Möbius user, or you’re looking to learn more about this platform and how it can enhance your teaching. Luckily, you’ve stumbled upon a set of solutions that can help you help your students.
Most students have areas of a subject they don’t understand. However, not all students are aware of which areas those are exactly. Many students, when it comes to revision time, will revise everything and give everything the same attention, which is not a great idea. As my old Maths teacher put it: “when you revise, you shouldn’t be using a blunderbuss, you should be using a sniper rifle,” which is to say: know what you’re bad at and focus on that. There’s no need to spend a lot of time on things you’re good at already.
So, how can we instil this sage advice into our students when using Möbius?
To start, by using our advanced policies to create constructive learning loops, you can set things in Möbius so a student can only start a test if they have passed a previous lesson on the same material. Or, if they fail a short test on a very specific topic, they are given revision material instead of progressing to other activities. This forces the student to understand the concept before moving on.
Möbius also offers “Mastery Assignments,” which are essentially beast-mode revision tests, and the student is shown their progress in each group of questions. These tests are great tools to help students identify their weak areas. A student can then choose to go back and look at previous revision material or some of the wonderful interactive Möbius lessons you’ve created for them.
You can also create “Adaptive Assignments” that split larger revision tests into question groups. Based on the performance of a student in each of those groups, they could be shown revision material if their score wasn’t high enough or links to other revision material for those subject areas. They would then only progress to complete the test when they’ve passed the questions in that group. This enables a student to polish up on areas where they are weak in order to progress. Adaptive Assignments can be created with any rules you wish and are a great way to gamify your student’s assessment and revision.
With Möbius you can also craft revision tests with “Adaptive Questions.” This feature allows you to set up questions with different rules. For example, you can set up questions so that if the student is wrong, instead of being shown the correct answer, the problem is broken up into smaller steps, and the student still needs to answer the sub-steps. This feature allows the student to engage with the material and automatically gives them help by walking through the steps and offering hints so they can see the overall process for solving the problem they got wrong. This means they’re focusing on their weak areas, which is exactly what we want them to do.
If you’re not already implementing some of these ideas in Möbius, why not give it a go? Not sure where to get started? Our friendly and knowledgeable support team are always here to help. Reach out to us here!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lachlan Swain has a Master’s Degree in Theoretical Physics and has been supporting the STEM academic space for over a decade since completing his studies. First in hardware, helping labs with experimental and industrial equipment. And now in software, where he is currently the Team lead for Implementation and Support of Möbius at DigitalEd.