Richard Cyr and Matt Meyer
In the past, many students didn't complete the course or got a poor grade. We first need to think of best practices in undergraduate education, then think of what tool will help that the best. In sciences, instructors are interested in addressing the learning work ethic--things get hard in science. Students need to learn how to get through the intellectual trenches.
BIOL 100 has 1,500 students a year; it is a requirement for 13 majors. There is a huge diversity of students in terms of background, motivation, and abilities. The course has 40+ TAs, 6 faculty members, a lab coordinator, and a course coordinator.
Assignments in the course include five 40-question multiple choice exams, in-class clicker points, labs with weekly quizzes, short reports, worksheets, and a cumulative final.
Class
activities:
Prior to class: online tutorial--content including Flash, formative quizzing for understanding, instructor gets summary results for class via ANGEL--identifies difficult questions that will need to be reviewed in class. So much material online that there is no longer a required textbook. In class: instructor identifies difficult material, reviews, probes student understanding.
Developing WikiBooks in Wikispaces -- that for 110 should be visible to those interested. It is easy to add content and the system supports common file formats. Because the class is so large, students don't have editorial privileges. He piloted WikiBooks in BIOL 110 in fall 2009. He is proposing WikiBooks for four courses by 2013, all open-source. Will work with instructional designers to vary the terrain with VoiceThread, interactive quizzing, etc. There will be tracking features. Benefits: increases utility of material. Can skip the publishing cycle of traditional textbooks. Decreases textbook cost to students.
In class: reinforce problem areas and clarify misunderstandings. Prompt feedback (one of the principles). Students say clickers keep them on their toes.
After class: case studies that help students solve practical problems. Later, they use it to create multiple choice questions for the final exam.
Peer tutors--the human element can't be ignored. Upper-level students helping primarily freshman. They are trained to guide students to find the answer, not to give answers. They are using tutor training as a gateway to assistant TA, undergraduate TA, and for some a five-year BS/MEd.
Gains--less than a 10% drop rate. Low number of F's. Higher test performance and question effectiveness.
Future efforts to improve learning work ethic: Make better uses of clickers--use for more high-stakes questions. Find better ways to get student outcome data to tutors and TAs. Figure out ways of getting students to do online tutorial homework.
Innovations in the redesign of introductory biology labs--Matt Meyer, instructional designer in Teaching and Learning with Technology, is helping. They are being piloted this semester. Reasons: assessment from mid-state accreditation process indicated labs were not servicing students. Shortage of lab classroom space. Lack of scalable approaches to help students to learn how to think critically.
Backward design:
Identify course goals (non-majors): understand the scientific method.
10 modules. Scalable. Cost reduction in TA need.
Spring 2009 development. Identified blogs as location to house content. ANGEL course pointed to online content on the blog. Created interactive content including narrated animations.
Spring 2010: Carried content forward and added to it, such as content from YouTube, Kaltura, and VoiceThread, embedded into the blog. The development team did all project documentation in Google Docs--no e-mail attachments or versioning issues. Project team member Tyrone went to Australia. He and Matt called each other via Skype, which now has a screen-sharing feature. They used Google docs and spreadsheets for assessments as well as evaluation forms.
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