Whiteboarding Problems and Fixes

One of my goals for this year was to encourage the use of whiteboards in my class, and to get the students move involved with them.  As experienced by many teachers, I found whiteboards to be a great way for students to work together on a problem, hash out ideas, and then share what they’ve found.  However, lately my classes have been having problems.  A possible solution to this is to build whiteboard ePortfolios.

State of Affairs

Ideally when a group goes to show off their whiteboard work, the rest of the class will be listening attentively and read to ask questions or make comments.  Sometimes this happens, but lately I’ve noticed that the students have been quiet and disengaged during this process.  It makes for an awkward period of time during the class, and not very productive.  The students don’t want to ask questions and clearly are not putting a lot of brain power into the presentations being shown.

Analysis

I think there may be a few reasons that is causing this.  First of all, my classes are all very large with 30 kids in almost each class.  This leads to a lot of idle time for students as we go through presentations.  Secondly, the classroom is very crowded with rows of benches bolted to the floor and inadequate room between the rows. We cannot gather in a circle and frankly, it is even quite difficult for a student to move from the middle of a row to the side.  Overall the environment is not very well suited for group discussions.  I would image a completely different atmosphere if we all were able to stand up and move to an open space where we could sit in a circle and talk.  But as Monty Python would say, “But it is not to be.”

A Fix?

As for solutions, I think the first thing that I should try is to pick only one or two groups for presentations.  This may leave the other groups and students with the feeling that their whiteboard work is not valued.   Perhaps another idea is to photograph their whiteboards (I currently do this) and then assemble them into a type of ePortfolio.  Each student would then build a portfolio of their whiteboard work which can be reflected upon and assessed.  I think this could be a great idea but it will take some serious thought to work out.  I must admit - I’m pretty pumped about the idea. I need to take a step back and make sure the rationale is correct and that the implementation will work for me, and more importantly, my students.

Path Forward

The first thing I need to do is ask myself what is important to the students in the whiteboard experience, and if a whiteboard ePortfolio will add to this experience and help with Assessment As Learning.  If that seems okay, the next step would be to identify a system that the students can use.  Off the top of my head, web candidates include:

• Mahara (I can host and set up)
• Tumblr
• Posterous
• Wordpress

Mahara is appealing in that I can set it up for the students and not have to troubleshoot blog accounts.  On the other hand, perhaps students would like to have their own creative control over the process.  If I decide to move ahead with this idea, I’m not very clear on the path forward yet…