Hi, I created an activity on exponential function graphs and analysis. Please check it and provide feedback on whether I did a good job and whether there are any mistakes or areas that I need to correct or improve.
Thank you.
Can you make the columns larger so that the input for students doesn’t overlap?
Thank you, Nick. However, as Anurag mentioned, it is still in view-only mode. I changed it and tried using a single Force Check button, but even that affected the view-only mode.
Anyway, your idea gave me another thought. Since the students are not evaluating the answers step by step—they are folding the paper and finding the answers—I decided to use one Force Check button for the entire table. I have pasted the screenshot below for reference
I like this new iteration a lot better. Much cleaner.
Overall feedback: I learned something new in your very first block of code, so thank you for this! I think it is well scaffolded and pretty easy to follow. However, it is very long. I can see it taking a student at least an hour to complete.
Here is some more specific feedback (my apologies if it is too much and very critical. I can’t turn it off. It’s a character flaw of mine):
- Cascades might help so this doesn’t feel so overwhelming.
- As you get further in the activity, it might be nice to make a copy of the original table visible. I’m pretty far into the “Now Tell Me” section and I have to keep scrolling up to look at the table. Similarly, when I evaluate the exponential function later, the table might be helpful.
- You may want to consider some more “sectionWideCheckWork” in some areas. As a “student”, I am overwhelmed by the number of boxes that I have to fill in and check
- For “Write the equation that models the paper folding pattern”, consider adding some feedback if they get the answer wrong such as “You must type an equation. Make sure your equation starts with L(n)=”
- On line 164 and 165, your = is outside of your “m” tag. Also several other places.
- Stylistically, do you want your numbers inside of tables to be in “m” tags?
- When you switch to g(x), maybe some feedback on that incase they get it wrong by typing f(x)?
- On line 443, your answer checker is missing the f(x)
- Once you get to the graphs, I would consider having the points populate from their table, and not showing the function until they’ve entered the points. You can use hide=“condition” where condition is something like !$ans.creditAchieved. This is also a place where I would use “sectionWideCheckWork” instead of individual answer checkers.
- For the y-intercept, I’d add explicit instructions to state as an ordered pair or add feedback.
- For the domain, add information to type \infty to get infinity. You tell them later, but they’d need it before then.
- Similar feedback and issues for the rest of the graphs.
- I quit after the first graph because it was so long. I imagine a student would have given up sooner if they were doing this independently.
Is this meant for something students are doing outside of class ahead of a class meeting, in groups in class, individually in class, in class over a longer period of time (more than a class meeting)? I think intended context would help provide appropriate context to the reviewer.
Hi Carly
Thank you for the feedback. I accepted most of your suggestions and made the corresponding changes, including updates to the conditional statements and descriptions.
I prepared this activity with my class in mind, which runs from 6:00 to 7:45 (nearly two hours) and is a group-based classroom activity in a flipped classroom model. I noticed a few mistakes when I assigned it, since I wanted to see how it would work in my classroom. Some students mentioned that the questions were not challenging enough for them and that they finished quickly.
This is not a homework assignment; it is a classroom activity. In a flipped classroom setting, I want students to stay engaged for at least about an hour during the activity. After reviewing it again, I noticed some repetition, so I revised the activity to reduce redundancy and improve engagement.
After your review, I updated the first part as well as the growth and decay section. Thank you for taking the time to review my activity.
Next time, I will make sure that I will post the context and my class duration for which the activity was prepared.