The Bird's Eye View

Hi, everyone!

To make it easy for you to decide what you might like to examine more closely in this blog, I offer the following "bird's eye view." There were many more sessions and these posts are just a summary of the ones I attended. Some posts contain links to resources. Posts are in reverse sequence, so if you want to journey from the beginning, you'd start at the last entry.

All the best,

Ludy Goodson goodsonl@erau.edu
Senior Instructional Designer Course Design & Production - Worldwide Online Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University 600 Clyde Morris Boulevard Daytona Beach, FL 32114-3900
Phone 386.947.5210 Fax 386.226.7107
goodsonl@erau.edu

Online Homework…
Online homework gave students practice and quick feedback. Students felt the homework helped them to learn, but they would not have done homework if it had been ungraded.

Southeastern SoTL Colloquy
This regional group is just beginning and this post is a brief overview of our “brainstorming” of ideas for the future.

Interactive StudyMateTM…
Surveys showed that students used and valued a variety of electronic study aids (ESAs).

Group Problem Solving…
How can you create a group structure for effective learning with both individual and group responsibility? Take a look at the recitation structure – it’s a good model for planning both classroom and online group process.

Guided Inquiry…
How should you design differently for beginning vs. advanced students? This study uses scholarship to answer the question with results that showed both learning and appeal to students.

The Scholarship of Teaching…
Here you will find encyclopedic links to resources for support on developing and using the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Welcome to the Dance…
Several major learning taxonomies differ in language and architecture. If you want a “Cliff notes” edition of each taxonomy. this is the blog for you. If you want more details, contact goodsonl@erau.edu.

Scholarly Teaching and Scholarship
Scholarly teaching uses the results of scholarship. Scholarship is not just another study; it needs to beplaced in the context of the body of knowledge.

The Power of Course Design
The choice of “significant learning” and Fink’s design framework operated to improve the value of learning and its coherency in an online course. For more details, contact goodsonl@erau.edu or iahn@georgiasouthern.edu.

Online versus In-Class Teaching…
Assessments were grouped by level of learning outcome; results on a final exam were compared to learning styles. Students at either extreme of learning style performed better than those with “balanced learning styles.”

Student Self-Perceptions…
Use of a confidence-rating system helped students; students attribute value to the confidence-rating the system; grades improved; grades dramatically improve with the addition of a pretest. For more details, contact goodsonl@erau.edu or dslater@georgiasouthern.edu.

The Praxis of SoTL
SoTL is reflective, reflexive, and recursive.

Community, Voices, and Portals of Engagement
The intersection of communities, learning, and technology offer the opportunity for global perspectives and more open inquiry in a digital community.

Improving Academic Quality…
“Ramping up” a culture of assessment requires faculty participation and activities, including instructional design, faculty development, stipends, “coaches,” and a hefty budget.

A Methodology for Developing…
Rigorous validity and reliability procedures led to the development of a rubric that improved student performance and assessment of learning.

SoTL Commons Reception
View some of the beautiful people and get a feel for the international community at this conference.

Online Homework: Student Attitudes and Learning Outcomes in a General Economics Courses

Large classes offer a major challenge to giving guidance and feedback to students. Online homework assignments with automated feedback offer potential for student practice and guidance. In the study of such homework in Economics and Business Statistics courses, there was an advantage not only for multiple choice items, but but essays which become easier to grade when posted online (no need to deal with handwriting fog!).

Tools for applications discussed in this session included MyEconLab, Respondus, and Aplia in the Moodle LMS. With the homework system, students often also have the advantage of teh e-text, which tends to be cheaper than the print textbook.

Student surveys showed that most felt that they learned more from online homework, and some saw no particular difference with homework online; most felt that it took less time or that there was no difference in the time required to do online homework. The Pearson correlation coefficient did not show a strong correlation of homework grades with the final exam scores. Additional analysis needs to be done to complete the study.

Even though students reported that the homework helped them to learn, they reported that they probably would not do the homework if it were not graded.


Presenter: David Doorn, University of Minnesota Duluth

Southeastern SoTL Colloquy

Our planning session began with introductions of the Founders Council members. The items for discussion covered the bylaws and constitution, opportunities that we want to offer through the Southeastern SoTL Colloquy, affiliations that we would like to establish and sustain with other organizations such as CASTL, ISSOTL, and SoTL Commons. We briefly discussed other operational issues such as dues and the possibility of institutional memberships.

We spent most time on discussion of the goals and purposes of the organization and how to implement them. We created a "brainstorming list" on implementation avenues such as campus visits, individual collaborations (I invited everyone to come to the beach!), retreats, and workshops; further development of the Web site, development and sharing of "white papers" on hot topics such as promotion and tenure, IRB processes; and what kinds of files may be public vs. password protected.

In this discussion, we flagged some high vs. low priorities and will proceed with further follow-up on these issues after the conference.

Discussants: Southeastern SoTL Colloquy Founders Council Members who were attending SoTL Commons Conference

Interactive StudyMate TM-Generated Electronic Study Aids: Do Students Find Them Useful as Learning Resources?

The presentation began with a review of the options made available with the use of StudyMate 2.0, and a review of examples (flash cards, matching, crosswords, fill-in-the-blank, glossary, quiz, and challenge game). Use of this tool offers more elements of interactivity and feedback. Images and other media can be integrated.

The primary motivation for investing development in the StudyMate activities was to get students to participate. Large numbers of students were doing poorly, were not engaged in lectures, and would not come to office hours. If students would not interact with the course content, they would be unlikely to succeed in the course.

The electronic study aids were made available for freshmen to use in 8 sections of a beginning course taught by 5 instructors. A survey was given at the end of the course to determine whether students had used the materials, when they used them, and their perceptions of their value to their learning. Results indicated high use, high ratings for their effectiveness, and use at all hours except 3 am to 6 am and more late at night. Students had a high preference for feedback (96%) with the ESAs and would prefer a Web link with more quality information with the feedback (87%). If ESAs could be loaded on to iPods or other portable players, about 60% would probably download and use them.

There was no comparison to measures of learning outcomes (grades).

Presenter: David Kreller, Georgia Southern University

Group Problem Solving in General Chemistry Recitation to Promote Learning

The context of learning in the general chemistry course was a large number of students in each recitation section (e.g., 90) and contact-hour limits placed on faculty time. The challenge was to determine how to reduce the numbers in the recitation without increasing contact time. The solution was to increase the size in the lectures and increase the number of recitation sections.

Then consideration was given to the recitation structure, and key features included:

- mixed skill levels so students would learn from each other (Math SAT scores gave ability levels)
- requirement of student preparation for recitation through homework assignments
- teaching assistants for recitation and grading (undergraduate)
student participation and peer evaluation

WebAssign was used for online homework. The problems created were algorithmic, so students couldn’t mindlessly copy from each other.

In groups, students were given multi-step problems; answers were not obtainable from direct application of a formula, problems that encouraged discussion of ideas (estimation, qualitative answers).

Using a two-sample t-test to compare averages and a Mann-Whitney test to compare medians, results showed that test score averages before and after the group problem solving methodology, were not significantly different. But there was a 10% increase in A, B, C, and D grades that could not be attributed to differences in students’ SAT scores.

The ERIC Document Service Reproduction No. EJ814870 can be used in a search for the paper.

Presenters: Madhu Mahalingam, Fred Schaefer, and Elisabeth Morlino, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia

Guided Inquiry in an Upper Level vs. Lower Level Undergraduate Course

This session began with a review of the shift from “teaching is telling” to “teaching is enabling,” from “knowledge is facts” to “knowledge is understanding,” and from “learning is recall” to “learning is an active reconstruction of subject matter.”

With this paradigm shift, guided inquiry with learning through constructivism would seem to be good fit. Recognizing differences in students’ levels of expertise in a beginning vs. advanced chemistry course, however, demands some analysis of levels of inquiry that are appropriate.

In general, beginning students without prior knowledge of chemistry cannot start with open and unguided inquiry, but this does not mean that the lecture format is the alternative. Instead, two other options work: structured lecture-interactive and guided discovery.

Laura reviewed some key concepts from references on learning:

- the perception-input-filtering-storage-retrieval process of science learning - Johnston, 1998)
- the exploration-concept-invention the science learning cycle (Karplus, 1967; Piaget, 1964)
- key ideas about learning – constructing to understand, exploration-concept formation-application cycle, connecting and visualizing concepts and representations, discussing and interacting with others, and reflecting on progress and assessing performance (Bransford, et al)
- learning levels – information (recall), concept (classifies), simple rules (demonstrates), and higher complex rules or problem solving (generate) – (Gagné & Briggs, 1974)

Next, she considered what level of learning is expected in the introductory vs. the upper level course. The Process Oriented Guided Inquiry (POGIL) model was used for the introductory course and a team-based learning model (Michaelson) was used for the advanced course.

In both models, group work was done in class. In POGIL (cooperative learning) the groups changed, there were 4 or fewer in each group, roles were assigned, process skills were critical, group work might be graded, prompt feedback would occur sometimes, and peer assessment would occur sometimes. In team-based learning, the groups stay the same the whole term, with 5-7 members, no roles are assigned, low-concern for process skills, group work is graded, prompt feedback is provided, and peer assessment is critical.

Results for the introductory course of moving from the lecture-interactive to the inquiry teaching showed a higher distribution of A’s, B’s, and C’s with lower DWFs. For the upper level course, the shift from lecture-interactive to inquiry resulted in lower DFWs (small improvements in grade distribution, but too small to draw conclusions yet).

In the introductory course, analysis of questions grouped by learning level shows more gains (significantly higher) for recall and conceptual learning. In the upper level course, there were no clear differences across types of learning outcomes. In both courses, the average difference in correct responses to common items across exams was persistently higher in the inquiry classes.

Student evaluations of guided inquiry in the introductory course revealed some benefits (socialization, staying on task, and help in problem solving) and some problems (rudeness, feeling of inadequacy, group lack of knowledge or too much socialization, insufficient explanation and guidance).

Student evaluations of inquiry learning in the advanced course gave high marks for the class activities, instructional approach, and course resources.

Presenter: Laura DeLong Frost, Georgia Southern University

The Scholarship of Teaching: What's the Problem?

My friends Laura DeLong Frost and Don Slater and I caught up on research ideas while eating a high-carb lunch of sandwiches, pasta, potato chips, and apple pie with buttery flaky crust. By the time our keynote speaker began, we were starting to feel the effects and I just wanted to nap. So, if I missed anything critical, you will know why.

Randy Bass wrote The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: What’s the Problem? back in 1999. He mentioned from that artilcle, “the culmination of nearly a decade of discussion that began with the 1990 publication of Scholarship Reconsidered (Boyer), and then refined later in Scholarship Reassessed (Glassick, Huber, Maeroff, 1997)” and drew attention to the theme that we have “ideas worth spreading,” playing a clip from TED talks by Sir Ken Robinson. This 18-minute video provides a perspective on the purpose of education.

Randy emphasized the need for communal work in the intersection of teaching, learning, and technology, and the need for the visible knowledge of scholarship of the teaching and learning process, referencing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons, The Visible Knowledge Project, and abundant other resources available at the Gallery of Teaching & Learning.

Randy reminded us of the original value of the educational system, designed to meet the needs of industrialization, and how often students have been benignly told to take courses that will lead to a job, as “you’ll never get a job doing that” in which “that” represents what the student was really good at doing and enjoyed. He thinks our education system has “mined our minds” for a particular academic commodity, and that the paradigm shift from “providing instruction” to “producing learning” back in 1995, has made progress. The concern by both Robinson and Bass is the loss of creativity.

Barr and Tagg in their 1995 publication of From Teaching to Learning – A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education sparked a movement. Yet, looking at one example of progress since then, he pointed out that the “high impact activities” of NSSSE include activities such as internships and extra-curricular activities, leading him to wonder, “So, what are the low-impact activities?” "Would those be our courses?!" Students are learning even if we are not teaching. What progress have we really made?

The Carnegie Foundation also provides resources at Strengthening Pre-Collegiate Education in Community Colleges (SPECC). From this project, Randy played a clip from The Think Aloud project to illustrate the difficulty and complexity of the learning process even for basic skills (select “Think Aloud with Jay’s Commentary” to view the clip). Other sample cases on basic skills are available at Windows for Learning: Resources for Basic Skills Education.

Randy elaborated on the meaning of The Middle of Open Spaces: Generating Knowledge and Learning through Multiple Layers of Open Teaching Communities by Bass and Bernstein (or see the chapter among a list of related articles). These “middle spaces” between practice and published literature are “informal and not tied to high stakes.” In addition to the Visible Knowledge Project, Randy encouraged use of the KEEP Toolkit available for developing Web sites with visually appealing representations.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has valuable resources to support scholarly teaching and the development of scholarship at CASTL Higher Education. Another resource is Collaboration across Disciplines on a Digital Gallery. As an example of collaborative inquiry, Randy referenced the “Lesson Study Project” at the University of Wisconsin, La Cross (select Makoto video, if interested in viewing the interview about lesson study research) and focused on Lesson Study: An Experience in Collaborative Inquiry.

Randy asked “How would you change your study to ask your question collaboratively?” and “Who else is asking some version of the same question?” And, he directed us to the Faculty Inquiry Toolkit.

He next drew attention to The Gap between Ability and Sustainability by Hern who had noted “The gap between students' ability to perform and the performance they actually sustain over the semester. Chronic condition in community colleges whereby students earn passing grades on individual assignments then withdraw or fail class.”

He mentioned digital stories as an emerging “signature pedagogy” of new ways of communicating as in multimedia authoring such as student posters and digital stories of student learning like those at gnovis journal (the example shown at the keynote was of a reflection on the role of makeup in a coed’s daily routines).

Randy emphasizied that we must deal not with just the “how’s” and “what’s” but the “why’s” of what we do. And, we need to move from the “knowledgeable” to “knowledge-able,” including new models of assessment such as those described by Wesch in From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments.

Keynote speaker: Randy Bass, Georgetown University