Worldbuilding: Creating a Sustainable Classroom Environment for Gamification

Gamification has so many benefits including increased student engagement and willingness to take on new challenges without the fear of failure. We have been using Classcraft, an online gamification platform that transforms our learning into a game, and we are off to an amazing start! Part of what has made us so successful is that my students had been practicing necessary online learning skills since August, and now they are able to apply these skills independently within a blended learning environment.

I think it’s normal for the newness of an experience to wear off after a while, and it’s easy to fall into a predictable pattern of learning and planning, so I’ve taken intentional steps to keep our learning experiences fresh and engaging.

It’s my goal to create a classroom environment- our own gaming world- that makes our gamified blended learning sustainable. Community, story narrative, and engaging content are key aspects to consider when worldbuilding.

Community

Online learning is not synonymous with isolated learning. The community aspect of a classroom should transcend the actual location of learning- whether that is online or face-to-face. Regardless of where and how students are learning, they should have opportunities to interact with the content and their learning community.

Building a positive community within a competitive gaming situation is critical. Friendly competition is great, but what’s even better is a collective community that is genuinely interested in the learning of everyone involved. One way that we build our community is through collaborative battles within our game. Boss battles are formative review challenges within Classcraft where my class work together to defeat a fictional character. When the class is counting on every student to work hard and be prepared, students are motivated to invest in their peers. It’s powerful stuff!

My student groups also compete throughout the day for extra XP. The red team created a goal without any prompting from me, showing me that they are interested in building up our community too. Classcraft also has random events that can award students points, deal damage, or provide a silly way to have fun together. Whatever the outcome, whether good or bad, we are in it together, and it reinforces our community.

Narrative

Each quest within our game includes a fictional story. This narrative follows us from one adventure to another. An interesting story goes a long way toward keeping students interested in completing online tasks. I realized that my struggling readers were sometimes missing the narrative of our game because it was difficult for them to understand.

For that reason, I started creating short “quest trailers” that help students jump right into the story and understand the objective for the quest. It was a big hit with students, and after I started using these videos, my class as a whole was more interested in the story behind our game.

Since the quest trailers are a bit time consuming to create, I’ve also been using Blabberize to help students get excited about quests. It’s a quick and silly way to engage my learners, and they are excited to start making their own blabs in the near future.

Secret missions are also a bit hit for my students. I let them know that I’ve “hidden” an extra task in our quest with a large reward. They can unlock the secret mission when they complete a certain task, but they don’t know what that task is, so they are extra motivated to complete their work.

Engaging Content

Let’s be honest. Boring content is boring content. If I want my students engaged, then I need to find and create resources that they are interested in. Our online lessons include a lot of various media- articles, infographics, visual charts, pictures, Youtube videos, book read alouds, songs, and teaching videos I’ve created.

Here are a few of my favorite tools and sites for finding and creating engaging content. I'd love to hear your favorites too- add a comment below!

• Playposit allows me to make any online video interactive for my students.
• Flipgrid is a great way to allow students to interact in online discussion or demonstrate their understanding for an assessment.
• Wonderopolis is a fantastic site that provides students with interactive images and videos on a variety of topics. It’s a great way to encourage students to explore a topic.
• Thinglink allows you to make any image interactive. There are lots of different pricing plans, but the basic version is enough for me.
• Kidsdiscover has some great infographics for download.
• TheKidShouldSeeThis has short educational videos that are perfect for my learners.

Every Game Needs a Gamemaster

In this journey into gamification, I’ve realized that my students take their cues from me. While my role is to prepare content, give feedback, and provide instruction so each student moves toward mastery, I also have the important role of Gamemaster.

It’s important that I show my excitement and willingness to be silly and play with my students while we learn. I’m both the teacher and the Gamemaster. I set the tone for a positive community and a positive game experience, which means my students need to know that I’m all in!

Setting the Stage: Preparing Students for Gamification

My goal for this quarter is gamifying our blended reading groups. Gamification is incredibly motivating for students, and I am already beginning to see the benefits of using Classcraft with my learners. Before beginning though, there were a number of foundational skills and experiences that my students needed in order to find success while learning independently in a blended model.

Online Learning Skills

I remember learning last year that we read online text much differently than we read print text. It stands to reason that students need specific skills to learn independently online. I applied what I learned about creating online content and then taught my students a few specific skills to prepare them for their online learning.

First, I had to teach students the difference between watching videos for entertainment and engaging in video content for learning. It seems obvious, but students need practice engaging with media by pausing, taking notes, making sketches, asking questions, and finding connections.

Second, I’ve helped my students develop visual literacy skills through graphic novels so that they can effectively learn information from visual sources. Third, we have spent quite a bit of time self-assessing our work this year using rubrics and learning progressions. As a result, students have developed a self-awareness of their learning tendencies and self-monitoring skills needed to learn independently online.

Experience with Tools

I have been intentionally been using a variety of technology tools in class this year. From our district learning hub, student blogs, Storybird, Pixton, Blabberize, Google Classroom and Flipgrid, we have been learning and demonstrating our understanding in a variety of different ways. When creating online learning tasks, I mostly use tools my students are familiar with so that they can successfully complete independent tasks.

When introducing each new tool, I encouraged my students to explore a little bit before I modeled using the tool for our learning. I did this to allow students the opportunity to discover new tools, not just “use an app.” I want my students to know how to learn about a technology tool without me directly by their side. That way they have confidence in their tech skills when learning on their own.

Quest Support

I learned last year that it is critical to have students solving their own technical problems. My goal is to teach small groups while students are learning independently online, so I can’t continually provide tech support. This year, I have identified four students who excel at problem solving. These kiddos are able to help their classmates when they run into problems. My quest support students are also available to explain learning tasks when students are struggling, freeing me up to teach guided reading groups.

A Note on Managing Personalized Blended Learning

Part of what makes using Classcraft so great is that students can work at their own pace to complete tasks and objectives. While this is great for my students, it poses a challenge in managing the learning of my 33 students. For that reason, I created our Classcraft board. It serves as our main form of communication for the tasks were are learning.

Student have a magnets with their picture next to their team shield. When they finish a task that I need to check, they move their picture to the scroll. Once I check their work, I move their picture to the treasure chest or book to show that they have moved on to the next task or need to go back, review the feedback I left for them, and try again. This board also helps limit how many tasks students can finish in one week so that my learners are encouraged to complete work well rather than rushing to try to get ahead.

Beginning Gamification with Classcraft

My goal in gamifying our blended learning rotation during reading groups is to increase motivation and engagement when students are working independently. Since students are working on their own, and not in a whole group setting, I was in need of a sophisticated gamification app to both deliver online content and assess student learning. 

While I like the idea of being able to customize game settings to best meet the unique needs of my learners, I really needed an app that is easy to use for a complete novice in the gaming world (that’s me!). Classcraft is a perfect fit. It’s really great, guys! I can easily customize settings for my class, and it has online support via chat, community forums, and all kids of video tutorials. All those resources made it really simple to get things all set up for my class. 

Basic Features

I created accounts for my students and assigned teams in only about 10 minutes. Once that is done, individual students are able to create their own character. Student teams work together to gain points, protect one another from possible negative events, and ultimately, level up in the game. This collaborative aspect of the game provides an extra layer of motivation through peer accountability. As the gamemaster, I can assign students or teams points or damage based on their class behavior, very much like Class Dojo. All this is free for teachers! 

Teachers can view student profiles and add points from
 a computer or smartphone. 

Delivering Lessons and Assessments 

It gets better! What I’m really excited about is quests. I decided to pay for a premium account so that I would have access to this feature. Quests are a series of lessons and tasks that I create for my students. This is how I deliver online lessons and assessments. Each task is accompanied with a story, where I write a narrative of what is happening in our fictional world of the game, and what characters must do to complete the quest and win. 

This map outlines the seven tasks students must finish to complete the quest.

As students work their way through each task, they reveal a new part of the map we are playing through and earn rewards for their character and team. When students earn enough points, they level up, making their character more powerful and acquiring new skills. Students can also use the gold pieces they have earned to get a pet for their character or buy new accessories to make their characters look extra awesome. 

Personalized Learning 

Another great feature for quests is that I can personalize learning for my students. Within each quest, I can create multiple paths for students to reach success. If Student A is completing tasks well, she can continue on the normal path, or even choose a more challenging path. When Student B shows that he has not mastered a skill, I can set up the quest so that he automatically follows a separate path to receive reteaching and extra practice before progressing to new skills. How great is that!? 

After a bit more practice, I plan to start creating quests with these more complex paths to personalize student learning. Here is my first attempt. The yellow path is the most direct route and requires basic mastery of skills. The red detour includes reteaching and remediation activities, while the purple detour challenges students to apply their learning in new ways. 

This map shows multiple learning paths for success. 

Initial Implementation

We have been using Classcraft in our reading groups for about two weeks now and we LOVE it! My students are so engaged and motivated. When students have failed at a task, they have asked to try again so that they can further develop their character. They have even asked if they can "play" Classcraft at home. Wow!! This is winning!

My next goal is to maintain this motivation after the honeymoon phase wears off. I can’t wait to see how my students learn and grow using gamification! 

Leveling Up: Gamifying Instruction to Increase Engagement

I told my students that my goal for 2018 is to have fun. I stopped straightening my hair, my husband and I set up a 15 foot trampoline in our family room for our kids (no really, we did that), and I committed to gamifying part of our instructional day. Let the fun begin!

Gamification Basics

I was introduced to the concept of gamification during my graduate course work last semester. Gamification is a fancy term that basically means using game design principles in a non-gaming context. It can be as straightforward as transforming learning activities into games or a more subtle application of game design principles to learning tasks. Game design principles include concepts like cooperation, competition, point scoring, genuine challenges, and character development.

Gamifying your classroom can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it. Some teachers choose to make their own game for their classroom in order to customize features including backstory, characters, rules, and objectives. At the same time there are many user-friendly apps that you may already use in your classroom:

• Kahoot A quizzing app allowing students to compete against classmates when answering questions.
• Quizizz A quizzing app that can be teacher or student paced.
• Class Dojo An app focused on building positive classroom community through teacher feedback.

Student Benefits

Playing games is part of our culture, and students can be highly motivated by game-based learning opportunities. Honestly, not of all my students are motivated by the grades they earn, but most are willing to spend hours working to beat a challenging level in their favorite video game. Pairing student motivation related to game playing along with learning tasks has the potential to increase student engagement.

Like with coding, failure in gaming does not usually result in immediate frustration like we so often see when our students are given a challenging educational task. In gaming, failure is an opportunity to gain immediate feedback on a mistake and try again. This type of growth mindset goes a long way in helping students develop perseverance and problem solving skills. If incorporating game design into learning tasks helps my students view challenging academic tasks in this way, then I’m all for it!

My Goal

My goal for this grading period is gamifying the blended learning portion of my reading groups.

I use a blended learning model for my guided reading groups because I want to maximize student learning when they are working independently. Last year, I created online lessons for students to complete independently. When we met face to face, I would provide instruction to further their progress based on their achievement so far. We experienced so many benefits of blended learning, and I found that my students were highly motivated to complete their online lessons at first because it was something new for them. There were also excited to have the responsibility of working independently on their Chromebooks. Unfortunately, when the initial excitement wore off, some students tended to stall out, and they lost interest in making progress.

My answer to that problem is using gamification to prolong student motivation and engagement while working independently. I’m looking forward to trying this with my students, and I’ll be sharing our experience in the coming weeks!

If you’re interested in learning more about gamification, watch this interview with gamification guru James Paul Gee. He makes some great points about teaching to meet the needs of today’s students.

Looking Back and Planning Ahead

Quarter One Recap

Over the summer, I spent some time reflecting about the changes I wanted to make to my instructional practices this school year. I set two very large goals. First, I decided move to a math workshop model for daily math instruction. During our first quarter, we successfully settled into the daily expectations and flow of learning. My co-teacher and I have seen huge student benefits using this model including small group instruction, daily differentiation, and greater student motivation. With teaching about six or seven students at a time, we also have a much clearer understanding of each student’s progress toward mastery. At the end of quarter one, we started moving toward blended learning by incorporating technology into our workshop. We are excited to move forward with our workshop model next grading period.

My second large goal for this year is to incorporate at least one student project inspired by my graduate school learning each grading period. During the first quarter, my students used their Chromebooks to record video book talks and provide peer feedback as a performance assessment for our first language arts unit. My students learned important language concepts and technology skills while boosting their confidence when publishing work online.

Quarter Two Projects

There are two projects that I think my students are ready to take on this grading period that I’m pretty excited about!

Visual Literacy and Graphic Novels

I recently had a Donor’s Choose grant funded by some very generous donors to supply my class with sets of graphic novels. I learned all about the importance of visual literacy for our 21st century students this summer. I studied the benefits of graphic novels in teaching visual literacy, and now I plan to apply those concepts during small group instruction.

Some educators and parents are probably skeptical about using graphic novels and comics to teach reading skills and concepts. I used to agree with the stigma that comics and graphic novels aren’t “real reading” because I thought you need lots of text in order to engage in deep comprehension and improve reading skills. I’ve learned, though, that graphic novels are actually quite sophisticated. They require readers to practice abstract skills like making inferences, understanding symbolism and metaphors, and using point of view. What better way to engage reluctant readers to analyze text for deeper meaning?

Graphic novels also provide our students with practical and motivating ways to interpret information in different ways than traditional prose. More and more, student are acquiring information on the internet through videos, graphic depictions, models, and interactive learning modules. Learning to analyze and understand images through reading graphic novels is both relevant and beneficial for our digital learners.

If you’re interested in reading more about using graphic novels in your reading instruction, I recommend these two quick resources: NCTE’s Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom, and Scholastic's Comic Books.  

Student Blogging

There are so many potential learning benefits with student blogging. Not only can student create content for an authentic audience, they also have ownership and purpose for their writing. This quarter, I am having my students complete a weekly blog post to reflect on their learning for the week. They can post about anything they learn about as a way of processing their learning and setting goals for the following week. Classmates can comment and make connections to their peers, and parents can track their student’s weekly reflections and support their learning at home.

I have chosen to have student blogs center around reflection because I think it is a valuable learning task that is currently lacking in my classroom. Mindshift’s writing, What Meaningful Reflection On Student Work Can Do for Learning, says that in order for reflection to be meaningful, it must be metacognitive, applicable, and shared with others. I think it will take time to coach my students toward this type of reflection and away from simple summarization, but I think it will be incredibly beneficial for their learning.  

Blended Learning & Math Workshop

We are wrapping up quarter one and I could not be more pleased with our math workshop.One of my personal goals for this year was to begin math workshop with my students and eventually incorporate blended learning. We are well on our way, and I’m pretty convinced that I never want to teach whole group math again!

Logistics

The original plan for math workshop was to have students work with a teacher each day (either myself or my co-teacher) and rotate through three other stations. With 33 students, we felt like we were losing too much time in transitions. To solve that problem, we decided to simply list independent tasks to complete for the day and allow students work through the daily list from their seats.

An added benefit to this update is that our groups are much more fluid. We are not confined to a timed schedule so that all students have equal time for each task.  If one group of students only needs a few minutes of review, then we can spend more time with students who need more time with us. When a student missed days instruction due to illness, we were able to keep him with a teacher for two rotations and skip independent work for that day.

We typically group in one of three ways. First, we have our general math groups based on how quickly students typically master math content. We also group students according to specific skill data from pretests and quick checks. Finally, we sometimes group students so that they have a partner to work with independently. Partners are chosen so that students who need coaching are paired with a peer who can provide support while working away from the teacher.

Heading Toward Blended Learning

We have been using our Chromebooks to practice math skills during independent time through xtramath and iXL all along, but last week we took a major step toward blended learning in our math workshop. The difference between blended learning and tech integration is the connection between online learning and face-to-face learning. Initially, we integrated technology to allow students to practice math facts and review previously taught content. Now, however, we are able to connect our online learning content directly to our small group lessons.

With the use of my new document camera provided by a grant through Donor’s Choose, I started creating simple teaching videos for my students who are working independently. So far the videos I have created provide additional guided practice for my students. I work through a series of problems while my students follow along by solving problems with me. The connection between online learning and face-to-face learning is strengthened when we use data to determine student needs and respond accordingly.

This student is practicing mixed number and improper fraction conversions.

I saw a handful of benefits last week including students working at their own pace- pausing and replaying the video as often as they needed. Students could also choose to work with me on the video, or pause and solve the problem, then watch it to check their work. Looking forward, I’m really excited about a few added benefits like students being able to access these teaching videos from home. Parents will be able to see how we are practicing in class and better support their learners. Also, students who are absent can review material from home, or after they return during independent time, meaning they miss less instruction.

Every student said that they enjoyed practicing through video. They commented that it was like working one-on-one with the teacher because other students did not distract them. They also commented that they liked working at their own pace. Some students said that they liked not feeling rushed, while others said they appreciated that they could practice independently when they no longer needed help. Many of my students challenged themselves to solve problems on their own, and they felt so accomplished because they could see their progress.

A Moment of Perfection

My co-teacher and I were amazed at the efficiency of our math block after just one day of incorporating teaching videos with our students.

We used a quick check to determine which students needed more support with certain skills. Some students didn’t meet with a teacher at all that day because they didn’t need to. All the other students had the opportunity to work on the same skill in three different ways: face-to-face with a teacher, blended learning through videos, and digital visual models through iXL.

These learners are using visual models online through iXL.

She has paused the teaching video to take a moment to
think about how to solve the next problem. 

Here's the most amazing thing. The group that I met with second had already worked through the teaching videos before I was ready to work with them. I asked them to solve two quick problems when they came to me, and only two of the seven students in that group still needed my face-to-face help. Five students met proficiency from the digital practice and self-reflection they participated in online. Automatically, my group of seven was reduced to two, and those kiddos were able to have all my attention for intense intervention.

Seriously, I’m never going back to whole-group teaching during my math block. While we have a lot of room to grow in the variety of online content we provide for our students, we are certainly heading in the right direction!

Starting Math Workshop

One of my personal goals for this school year is to transition to a math workshop model. As much as possible, my co-teacher and I try to teach math in smaller groups for a number of reasons.

First, we have an inclusion classroom, so we have a wide range of needs. Teaching in small(er) groups allows us to work more closely with each student. We are able to gain a clear idea of the skills each student has mastered, and who needs more support. That data helps us to differentiate our instruction, making sure all students are progressing toward our objectives.

Next, we have a large class. Right now, we have 31 students and 2 teachers. Working in smaller groups ensures students are engaged and on task. Moreover, our time is much more efficient because there are usually fewer distractions.

With our 31 students we can split the class to parallel teach (teach the same lesson at the same time) and each have about 15 kiddos, but we don’t really feel like we experience the benefits of small group instruction with such a large group. We also use alternative grouping, where one teacher leads a whole group lesson, while the other teacher teaches a small group of 5-6 kids. Unfortunately, we still have a very large group of students with one teacher, and they are not benefiting from small group instruction.

Last year we sort of stumbled into a grouping method that finally seemed to make a difference. Half of our students would work independently on a review task, assessment, or project while my co-teacher and I would split the remaining students, effectively allowing us each to have a quarter of our total students for small group instruction. We could also set up 3 rotations, allowing each teacher to meet with a sixth of the class. After replicating this grouping system as often as we could, we started to have serious discussions about making this a regular part of our future teaching. This year, we are intentionally moving toward a math workshop model for our instruction in order to take advantage of these small group possibilities.

Math Workshop Explained

Math workshop generally consists of a short mini lesson for the whole class and centers or stations in which students work independently for a time and then receive small group instruction with the teacher. The blog post Differentiate Math Instruction with M.A.T.H Workshop at The Core Inspiration is a great explanation of the different aspects of math workshop. I found it helpful in thinking through how I might create meaningful work for my students when they are working on their own.

One of the main reasons I hadn’t tried math workshop in the past is because the idea of creating multiple center activities and directions for students every day seems so overwhelming. Not only that, but our students need consistency. Learning a new math game or trying a new activity every few days would be a disaster. What I like realized after reading various blogs is that consistency can be a part of math workshop, and thanks to our technology resources, it doesn’t need to require excessive material preparation.

Here’s a list of activities I’m planning to use for independent work to start off this year:

• Multiplication fact fluency with Xtramath or multiplication partner game
• Independent skill review and practice with IXL
• Partner skill review and coaching with paper and pencil worksheets
• Number work (building number sense with “number of the day” type activities)
• Assessments including pretests, quick checks, and tests

Eventually, once we have the hang of the procedures and expectations of math workshop, my goal is to incorporate some online learning. A station rotation model of blended learning would work really well here. To create the online content, I’ll make my own teaching videos using a document camera (check out my Donor’s Choose grant to help make this possible!) and using Khan Academy materials.

Logistics 

This article from Math Tech Connections helped me to wrap my mind around various ways to organize our math workshop. It outlines three different ways to create groups and rotations-plus there’s free planning resources!

For our class, we will have two sections of whole-group time including daily math review and our daily mini lesson at the start of our math block. Then we will split into three main groups for our stations. During our stations, students will have about 15 minutes at each station.

• Teacher Instruction: Focused and differentiated instruction will be provided for students related to each day’s whole group mini-lesson.
• Independent Review: This will be mostly fact fluency for now. Eventually, it will become the online learning portion of our stations.
• Partner Practice: Students practice recent skills with a partner for support and collaboration.

Workshop in Action

Today was our first day using the math workshop model. We taught our mini lesson and took some extra time to discuss our learning expectations during independent work time. This left about 40 minutes for instruction. Our students completed two or three stations today. We left the third station as optional for our early finishers.

Independent Work: students completed a pretest for an upcoming unit.
Skill Review (optional): students practiced math fact fluency online. 

Teacher Stations: students practiced rounding on a number line.

Winning with Workshop 

Let’s reconsider the problem of large groups. With this model, students would ideally get 15 minutes of differentiated teacher instruction in a small group of only about 5 students. FIVE! With 31 students, that’s 10 in each of the three groups. Since there are two teachers for the teacher instruction station, that’s about 5 with each teacher if we divide groups strictly by number of students. Does that seem amazing to you? Because it seems really amazing to me!

The Fast Finishers and Purposeful Slowpokes of Blended Learning

I was very purposeful in my planning to make blended learning implementation as smooth as possible. See my post, Planning for Success, for details. I used some of our strengths to our advantage while proactively addressing predicted areas of concern. My planning definitely helped us transition to blended learning successfully, but we have had a few bumps in the road lately. Here are a few issues I’ve run into, some solutions I’m considering, and a major success we have experienced.

Fast Finishers 

There are two types of fast finishers in my class. Both finish their work quickly and eagerly await for me to release the next lesson to them. For this reason, I purposefully wait to release the next lesson to students until I am sure they have completed their work to the best of their ability and have received extended learning time with me on the same topic.

I’m finding that some of my fast finishers have neglected to truly think deeply about the online content. In fact, they often completely miss the requirements and directions for online discussions and fail to answer extended response questions adequately, even when models are provided. When I meet with these students and review the directions I get the typical, “Ohhhhh, ok,” and off they go. These students seem to need constant monitoring in order to produce thoughtful, quality work.

If we are being honest, I just can’t keep up with their need to be redirected continually. I’ve thought of three possible solutions to this problem. First, I can pair these students with partner who is working successfully online to provide extra support and explanations of directions. Another possibility is providing an incentive for completing activities according to the directions. Finally, I can provide audio clips explaining directions for the extended response and discussion boards. If you have other suggestions, please comment below!  

The fast finishers who have truly mastered the content are another matter. I recently read a blog post by the Gifted Guru about early finishers that I absolutely agree with. My goal is to create meaningful learning for every student in my class. If the same students are consistently finishing early and mastering content quickly, then I should be planning for them differently rather than simply providing busy work activities. In the context of blended learning, I believe the solution to this problem lies in personalizing lesson content. This allows each individual student to own their learning and interact with content in challenging ways. I’ve explained that idea in my post titled Personalization and Universal Design for Learning. I plan to explore this more this summer and create online content following these principles.     

Purposeful Slowpokes

I’ve noticed a slowly growing number of students who are taking a surprising amount of time to complete their online learning. These students do not typically need extra time in class to complete other assignments, so I monitored their work very closely for a few days without them knowing in order to see what was going on. They were avoiding parts of the lesson that required answering questions or completing discussions by replaying online videos and learning games to excess. The surprising part is that these students are not normally task avoiders. In fact, they are high readers who usually excel in their work.

I’ve encouraged my students to review completed parts of lessons as needed, but these three students were pretty much camped out on videos, songs, and games. My best solution so far is to create a checklist for these students and require them to update me of their progress at the end of our stations each day. I’ll be starting this on Monday for my three purposeful slowpokes.

Winning with Student Tech Support 

The biggest issue I anticipated before implementing blended learning was the fact that students would not have direct teacher support while learning online because I teach guided reading groups at that time. To address this issue, I assigned 3 students the role of “tech support.” These students displayed the ability to problem solve and use good judgement when working online. Our class technology troubleshooting steps are posted every day during blended learning:

1. Think, “Do I really need help with this?”
2. Try to solve the problem on your own
3. Check with a Tech Support student
4. If you are still stuck, raise your hand for help

At first I had to interrupt my group to help a few students with tricky issues a few times per day. Now more students are fixing their own problems, and tech support students are being used less and less. Allowing three students to provide tech support has completely freed me up to teach- that’s winning!