McConnell’s paper on Conceptests was extremely relevant to my work. It explains the activity that I wish to do in my Physics course. The comment, “Effective conceptests are not simple content-based multiply-choice questions… Instead, [they] assess student understanding of the principal concepts underlying the lecture material” precisely describes what I would want the students to gain from my activity as a lesson in Moodle.
The authors go on to describe features of the tests which I do agree with. The problem I see, however, is that my course is basically all online and self-paced, so the discussions that were described are rather more difficult to undertake. I could put a forum there, but with the nature of the timing the students choose, would be rather ineffective.
This article has made me think about refining the lesson to include some sort of “discussion” or promote some sort of “thinking” from the students. This could be along the lines of if they get a wrong answer, not simply to say, “It looks like you have forgotten to convert units” but more to suggest that, “Something wasn’t quite right, what do you think it could be?” and then give a range of possible causes, such as “unit conversion” or “rearranging the equation” or “mistyped into calculator”.
The authors suggest that students achieve 35-70% correct responses and that is what leads to the discussion. Given the learning situation of my material, I would ramp up. I would want the students to get a few questions completely correct to start with to build their confidence. I have said before that I believe doing that with a conventional test is not necessarily beneficial because it is not really assessing the outcomes you really want the students to achieve, but in this lesson situation, it will really help to build up to the higher level outcomes, without taking anything away.
Smith’s paper, in a similar way to McConnell’s, was written regarding classroom based interactions between students. One comment I find intriguing is that, “Problem-based learning is suitable for introductory sciences”. I would beg to differ at that. The author’s reference to it being used in Medicine is something I have followed up with, but it is useful for graduate medical courses where the students have some knowledge of basic sciences first.
I can’t hope to believe that if I told my students to solve a problem such as given a car crash, estimate how fast each car was going, or the roller coaster didn’t make it up the hill in the first trial, analyse why this could be the case, that my students would get anywhere! They don’t even know what speed means, don’t know what mass really is, let alone a force. So I’ll leave problem-based learning to higher levels of engineering, where I think it is really useful – all the more reason to make sure the students understand the basic concepts before leaving my class!
The paper by Chizmar & Walbert was written in 1999 when the web technologies were not very advanced. The types of online activities they talk about are quite static.
Interesting that the ‘web-based learning environment’ is still done face to face but in a computer lab.
They really use the web to find data that they can then analyse in class through computer programs on the computer. They then use a forum to discuss a concept – this was new technology when the paper was written, and nowadays, much research has been done on forums and students comfort and confidence in using them.
The ‘one-minute paper’ was designed to give feedback and promote interaction between the students and the lecturer. This could be done totally online, but with the students and lecturers not being forced to see each other every few days by having lecture or tutorial times, there is less obligation on the lecturer to need to respond.
The web-based labs seem good. The students are required to do things such as analyse data and conduct simulations. This could be done completely over the web, but with the basic technology the authors describe, some updating of the processes would need to be considered. Also, the authors describe that the students work in teams, using the forum to discuss the possible solutions. This works for students all at the same point in the problem as each other – as described in the paper that online students work asynchronously, and that online learning was significantly less effective. They did not describe any solutions for overcoming this.
The authors describe how hyperlinking and posting of detailed answers online are ways to provide quick feedback. This is now common practice, but the quality of the feedback probably still needs consideration. It’s one thing to say to a student, you answered the question wrong – and link to page 45 of the textbook, and another to be able to determine why the student went wrong and provide customized, individual feedback immediately. This can be done though considered lessons in Moodle.
The authors use the internet for the students to post forums outside of class hours. I’m not sure how this emphasizes time on task, because students were not required to use the internet outside of hours and they do not report on how it improved learning.
The authors use rubrics to communicate high expectations. Yes, that does communicate high expectations, but it also communicates the requirements needed to ‘just pass’ and students who are pushed for time might use that to determine ‘minimum effort’. They also attempt to communicate high expectations by saying they will be publishing the papers on the web at the end. Firstly, the premise they base that on, “that every student likes to see their name in print”, I would like to see evidence of that today in my class before I did it. Secondly, forcing students to publish on the web would have to be clearly stated in the course profile. Blogging can, at least, be kept password protected if desired.
The lists in the last paper by Panitz were quite a bit more of the same as already been presented. A few interesting points though:
Brigham Young University – “Work with student affairs staff on issues related to student extracurricular life and life outside of school.” Working in that area myself, I can’t stress enough how much academics should be doing this!
- “Student orientations with faculty, academic and social.” This I just can’t stress enough!
Northern Essex Community College – “Demonstrate a can do attitude.” Many lecturers can seem quite unenthusiastic about teaching, having to teach, or even having to spend time doing prep for class. Academics may have a lot to do, but this can come across to students as a bad attitude.
At the end there are a lot of examples from Winona State University. What this demonstrates is that lecturers have to devote a very large about of time to their courses, especially in they are online. If lecturers were expected to respond in such personal, in-depth, extensive manners as those in the paper, that would be nigh on impossible with several classes of 100 students or more.
References
Chizmar, J. F., & Walbert, M. S. (1999). Web-based learning environments guided by principles of good teaching practice [Electronic version]. Journal of Economic Education, 30(3). pp248-259.
McConnell, D., Steere, D., Owens, K., et al. (2006). Using conceptests to access and improve student conceptual understanding in introductory geoscience courses. Concept to assess and improve understanding. U.S.A: National Association of Geoscience Teachers. pp61-68.
Panitz, T. (n.d.). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education implementation ideas. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from http://home.capecod.net/~tpanitz/7ideas.htm
Smith, K., Sheppard, S., Johnson, D., & Johnson, R. (2005). Pedagogies of engagement: class-room-based practices. Journal of Engineering Education, January. pp 1-15.
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