{"id":79,"date":"2018-11-07T02:34:08","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T02:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meristem.anu.edu.au\/?page_id=79"},"modified":"2018-11-07T02:34:08","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T02:34:08","slug":"the-meristem-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/meristem.weblogs.anu.edu.au\/index.php\/about\/the-meristem-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The meriSTEM story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Introduction video | meriSTEM\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3N6ccAGnTXc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>\u201cHow can we help?\u201d<\/h3>\n<p>Imagine asking this of a surgeon midway through open heart surgery, or a performer precariously spinning too many plates.\u00a0 Or, say, a room full of physics teachers midway through semester.\u00a0 If they had the capacity to come up with how you could help, they wouldn\u2019t need it.<\/p>\n<p>For years we have worked with the ACT physics teacher community, providing support where we could.\u00a0 The ACT is in a privileged position, where the number of academic physicists at the Australian National University (ANU) far outweigh the number of secondary school teachers.\u00a0 We have a real opportunity to provide great local support.\u00a0 But the form of this support tended to be one-off workshops, or classroom visits by university academics, or university visits by classes.\u00a0 These are all useful and important, but they don\u2019t address the biggest challenges in secondary teaching and learning, and those efforts are not scalable beyond the ACT.<\/p>\n<h3>Blended learning at ANU<\/h3>\n<p>At the same time, Joe was about to start teaching his university third year Theoretical Physics course in 2014, for the umpteenth time.\u00a0 He felt like his ability to improve the educational experience was being limited by the current format of the class.\u00a0 Too much of the precious, limited face-to-face time was spent delivering exposition rather than supporting students in their own application and learning.\u00a0 Inspired by the anecdotal experience of his colleagues and the growing body of peer-reviewed evidence, Joe decided to flip his lectures and blend his course.<\/p>\n<p>We decided to go all in.\u00a0 Like jumping into a cold pool, the evidence suggested that we\u2019d see the best results from fully committing to a blended pedagogy.\u00a0 So we did.\u00a0 With Ethan looking after the website and helpful guidance, Joe spent the summer of 2013-2014 converting his semester\u2019s worth of videos into online videos.\u00a0 These were accompanied online by questions testing the students\u2019 understanding.<\/p>\n<p>The freshly liberated 3 hours worth of contact hours were spent on a single, weekly workshop.\u00a0 Here, students would have the opportunity to apply what they had learned, to try to solve challenging and ill-defined questions in an environment where those attempts could be supported.\u00a0 Rather than suffering in isolation, they were supported by their lecturer, tutors and peers.\u00a0 Also, the workshop environment, unlike their assessment items, was one in which they could take intellectual risks.\u00a0 These are essential when grappling with new concepts and connecting them to older ideas.<\/p>\n<p>And it worked.\u00a0 The average exam performance increased by a full letter grade \u2013 and over the course of two years, there were enough students that the effect was statistically significant.\u00a0 Students reported a better experience and were universally pleased with the change in teaching method.\u00a0 Other educators made similar experiments, with similar results. \u00a0The results of this change were enough to convince the Physics Education Centre to undertake a redesign of its entire educational program, with flipped learning at its heart.<\/p>\n<h3>A way to help<\/h3>\n<p>There\u2019s some overlap between first year physics and senior high school physics.\u00a0 When Joe offered to share first year tertiary materials with secondary teachers, he was met with infectious enthusiasm.\u00a0 Many teachers were interested in blending their own classes, but lacked the time and resources to produce the requisite materials.\u00a0 The first year materials could be used to enrich their own high school physics classrooms.<\/p>\n<p>But the first-year materials wouldn\u2019t be quite right for the teachers\u2019 needs.\u00a0 Developing materials that were pitched at the level of high school students, tailored to the Australian Curriculum, and supported on an online platform was a way to help large numbers of teachers transform their classrooms, and use their precious contact hours actually teaching.<\/p>\n<h3>And so meriSTEM was born.<\/h3>\n<p>meriSTEM (modular educational resources in STEM) is an ANU-lead, volunteer-powered initiative that develops these blended classroom resources and distributes them to teachers for free.\u00a0 We aim to provide teachers with the online tools and in-class activities to support more STEM teachers embracing the educational benefits of a blended classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHow can we help?\u201d Imagine asking this of a surgeon midway through open heart surgery, or a performer precariously spinning too many plates.\u00a0 Or, say, a room full of physics teachers midway through semester.\u00a0 If they had the capacity to come up with how you could help, they wouldn\u2019t need it. For years we have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":977,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-79","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meristem.weblogs.anu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meristem.weblogs.anu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meristem.weblogs.anu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meristem.weblogs.anu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meristem.weblogs.anu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meristem.weblogs.anu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meristem.weblogs.anu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meristem.weblogs.anu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}