I have to say that my first experience working with Google Spreadsheet was an extremely frustrating one. I had an inordinate amount of trouble simply trying to do what I wanted, including copying the spreadsheet into another window, failing to find where I could click to Delete Row or Delete Column, failing to realize I can apply the "Average" equation across multiple boxes; all of this was on top of the fact that I had trouble grasping what Barry meant by growth above the overall average. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure on that, which makes it all the more frustrating as I've probably done a good deal of it wrong, or at the least included plenty of students that I shouldn't have and not included other students I should have. Frustrating to say the least!
Also, here is a link to my final spreadsheet here
It is clear from the graph that every student showed signs of improvement. Some student's growth was minimal, as in the case of Blair and Walter. Other students improved their overall grades by great strides such as T. Owens (clearly a much better football player than student). Having the graph is a strong visual indicator of which students need more help as the term goes along and which students are having a better grasp of the material as time goes one. It also clearly shows students who have weak performances accented by strong ones and then have weak performances again. These students should be encouraged study hard (not that I wouldn't encourage everyone to study hard) because they demonstrate the ability to do well sometimes but not all the time.
Amazingly enough, six out of the twelve students lower than the 191 average got well above that score on their final test. For the six who did not get higher than the average on their final test, the score for each person did increase from Test 9 to Test 10 by an average of almost 11 points. There were two students from the underachievers group whose test scores decrease from Test 8 to Test 9, and even then the average was 1.5 point decrease, which could easily be explained by a "bad day". Whoever is teaching this class can be sure that towards the end of the semester that they are doing a good job of trying to bring the students up to speed on their work.
Sounds like your struggles are pretty typical of nearly everyone who is experimenting with spread sheeting for the first time (youth or adult). It just the set of hurdles everyone has to jump over. After all, it's a collection of new skills.
ReplyDeleteBut, you are conquering all of them one by one, so hang in there.
So, the next steps to clean this up a little more are as follows:
1. on the all data sheet -> continue to drag all the columns narrow so there is less horizontal scrolling and easier to view
2. on the Underachievers Sheet -> be sure to include each students AVG for Tests 6 - 10 (add another column). Obviously, they should all be under your class avg of 191. This will answer your question of if they are all underachievers. Remove those that may be above the average.
3. In your Analyzing paragraph, be sure to address the key statistics (191, range of improved scores, etc.). Pretend you are an actual teacher who needs to use this data to modify/adjust instruction.
Conclusion: you're doing AWESOME. Just keep tweaking to perfection