Amy Morriss has been using Floop since 2017, primarily in her work as a high school Physics, Engineering, and Robotics teacher outside of New Orleans, LA. She has held previous positions as a technical coordinator for the telemedicine and distance learning department of Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in Lake Charles, LA, a research analyst for a consulting engineering company in Swarthmore, PA, and a physics and physical science teacher at South Plaquemines High School in Buras, LA. She now works as a Senior Field Trainer and Analyst with Engineer Your World at the University of Texas-Austin, developing high school engineering curricula and providing teacher support.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-morriss/
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During the Spring of 2020, educators were all frantically trying to figure out new ways to collect work and give feedback to our students. Prior, I was collecting physical lab notebooks, but I was forced to try different things to make this work. How do I take stacks of notebooks and grade them electronically? How do I make feedback feel less like a one-way street? How can I tell at a glance which students “got it” and which didn’t? I met Melanie, the CEO and Co-Founder of Floop, who was teaching the same curriculum as I was. So, I decided to give Floop a try!
My students were able to submit their engineering robotics lab notebooks electronically. My physics students were able to submit their bellringers and review questions. Problems solved! No more carrying notebooks home; now I could quickly see which students understood the material. Floop gave me the ability to have a robust back-and-forth conversation with my students on their work; not necessarily final submissions. We don’t often allow students to look at each other’s work, but running a peer review offers this opportunity. I can run a peer review of lab notebooks, which allows students to see what others can do and to learn other ways/formats to do a lab notebook.
While the biggest problem Floop solved for me was being able to provide meaningful feedback efficiently, a benefit I discovered is that now I use feedback data to help make decisions. For Physics, I give specific feedback on specific problems. By looking and seeing how many times I’m making the same comment (I’ve given feedback on problem #9 fourteen times!), I can see that I need to either revisit that skill or see how the problem can be clarified.
Since I started using Floop very early on, I’ve been fortunate to watch the evolution of the technology. My students and I really enjoyed seeing the feedback we gave turn into new features and a better user experience. In the early days, I used Floop for streamlining my notebook grading process and facilitating quick bell ringers. Still, the pandemic forced me to integrate Floop much more fully into my feedback process. I was lucky that I already had the tool – I just had to commit to finding more ways to use it to facilitate feedback communication with my students. Incorporating more peer reviews was a big part of this process.
My students were 1:1 with iPads, so they already had electronic versions of most of their work. For engineering notebooks, students would take screenshots or make pdfs out of their work for easy submission via Floop.