A lot of them were upset that they couldn't find a simple way to get this lab done. They are often programmed to complete tasks, not necessarily to understand them--and they expect learning to be easy, you see.
But this is my level 5 opportunity, after all. Students have to show me they know, own and can use the information. They have to be able to do multi-step thinking. They have to support any conclusions they draw with the data they calculate and collect. They have to solve the problem of their lab design and then show that their results mean something, that it's not just another project they put on poster board to be thrown away. It's not meant to be easy, because synthesis of several concepts at once isn't easy. But the value in it is that it leads to higher quality learning and skill-building that isn't seen in weeks or months; the return on time investment comes years later.
Because of the "expectation of easy," as I call it, there was a lot of frustration today, aimed squarely at me. I had to explain to my students that I could not:
- Tell them the exact words to write in their hypothesis
- Confirm that each thing they wrote in their pre-lab was correct
- Give them an example of how to set up their data table
- State what type of graph they were to make
- Show them the steps in which they need to use their two equations and how to do the math step-by-step (to me, this is like cookbooking a lab, only you're cookbooking the math for them)
If I did those things, I would be doing their thinking for them. I did ask them questions to try and lead them to the answers to their questions, but I did have a student erupt in frustration:
"You're supposed to tell us how to do this. It's your job. You're not being very helpful."
But I was being helpful--just not in the ways they expected, and not in ways that they can see an immediate impact. I think I'm being more helpful in the long term by being less helpful now.
Just like their lab, though, being less helpful isn't very easy.