LON-CAPA:Open Source Course Management

and Assessment System

Gerd Kortemeyer

Michigan State University

Resource Sharing

Sharing of Resources

• Creating online resources (web pages, images, homework problems) is a lot of work

• Doing so for use in just one course is a waste of time and effort

• Many resources could be used among a number of courses and across institutions

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Key to Re-Usability• The key to re-usability is to create course-

context free resources• In other words, same resource can be

used in different contexts• This means:

No button “next resource” No button “back to course menu” No wording such as “as we have previously

seen” etc

Using Re-Usable Resources

• BUT: how do you use context-free re-usable resources in the context of a course?

• You need an infrastructure to Find resources in

a library of resources Sequence them up

(put the puzzle together) Serve them out to

the students

Campus A Campus B

LON-CAPA Architecture

Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library

Resource AssemblyResource Assembly

Course ManagementCourse Management

Resource AssemblyResource Assembly

Course ManagementCourse Management

Campus A Campus B

Resource Assembly

Course Management

Resource Assembly

Course Management

LON-CAPA Architecture

Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library

Shared Resource Library

• LON-CAPA currently links 118 institutions in eight countries

Shared Resource Library

• The distributed network looks like one big file system

• You can see each institution, the authors at that institution, and their resources

Shared Resource Library

• Resources may be web pages …

Shared Resource Library• … with math in them …

Online Print

One XML/LaTeX Source Code

Shared Resource Library

• … or simulations and animations …

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• … or this kind of randomizing online problems

Shared Resource Library

Shared Resource Library

• …special emphasis on math …

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QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

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QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

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QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

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Shared Resource Library

• … chemistry …

Shared Resource Library

• … physical units …

Shared Resource Library• Dynamic Graphing

Shared Resource Library

• Total holdings and sharing

Campus A Campus B

LON-CAPA Architecture

Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library

Resource AssemblyResource Assembly

Course Management

Resource AssemblyResource Assembly

Course Management

Resource Assembly

“Supermarket”

• Shopping Cart

Resource Assembly

• Nested Assemblies

• No pre-defined levels of granularity („module“, „chapter“, etc)

• People can never agree what those terms mean

• Re-use possible on any level

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Resource Assembly

Writes module aboutenergy conservation

Writes module aboutmomentumconservation

Compiles modules about conservation laws

Uses wholeassemblyin his course

Campus A Campus B

Dynamic Metadata

Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library

Resource AssemblyResource Assembly

Course ManagementCourse Management

Resource AssemblyResource Assembly

Course ManagementCourse Management

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• Dynamic metadata from usage• Assistance in resource selection („amazon.com“)• Quality control

Dynamic Metadata

Selection Help

• Assembling materials for a course

Sorted byaccess count

Campus A Campus B

LON-CAPA Architecture

Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library

Resource Assembly

Course ManagementCourse Management

Resource Assembly

Course ManagementCourse Management

Course Management

• Instructors can directly use the assembled material in their courses navigational tools for

students to access the material

grade book communications calendar/scheduling access rights

management portfolio space

Course Management

Course Management

• Student homework progress

Course Management• Question Analysis

Course Management

• Enabling new modesof runningyour course

Collaborative learning space

Computer-enhancedstudent laboratory

Communities of Practice

User Institutions

• Increasing number of institutions

• Unexpected growths at K-12 schools

Teacher Initiative • Initiative: THEDUMP („Teachers Helping Everyone

Develop User Materials and Problems“)

• Assembling materials that are appropriate for high school use according to curricular units

• Including university materials

Sharing Communities• Online communities of practice

• Contributors versus users (institutions)

Communities of Practice• Disciplines

• Data from MSU

Some OLD Results - Still True

Time On Task

Exam and Course Grades

Before and After

Gender Differential

phy231: without CAPA

phy232: with CAPA

Gender differential

Seen in studies at three other universities

Discussion Analysis

Discussions

Problem

• A bug that has a mass mb=4g walks from the center to the edge of a disk that is freely turning at 32rpm. The disk has a mass of md=11g. If the radius of the disk is R=29cm, what is the new rate of spinning in rpm?

Solution

• No external torque, angular momentum is conserved

• Bug is small compared to disk, can be seen as point mass

€

1

2mdR

2 + mb02 ⎛

⎝ ⎜

⎞

⎠ ⎟ω0 =

1

2mdR

2 + mbR2 ⎛

⎝ ⎜

⎞

⎠ ⎟ω

⇒ ω =md

md + 2mbω0

Student Discussion• Student A: What is that bug doing on a disk? Boo to physics.

• Student B: OHH YEAH

ok this should work it worked for me

Moments of inertia that are important....

OK first the Inertia of the particle is mr^2

and of a disk is .5mr^2

OK and angular momentum is conserved

IW=IWo W=2pi/T

then do this

.5(mass of disk)(radius)^2(2*pi/T original)+ (mass of bug)

(radius of bug=0)^2= (.5(mass of disk)(radius)^2(2pi/T))+

(mass of bug)(radius of bug)^2(2*pi/T)

and solve for T

Student Discussion (cont.)• Student C: What is T exactly? And do I have to do anything to it to get

the final RPM?

• Student B: ok so T is the period... and apparently it works for some and not others.... try to cancel out some of the things that are found on both sides of the equation to get a better equation that has less numbers in it

• Student D: what did I do wrong?

This is what I did. initial inertia x initial angular velocity = final

inertia x final angular velocity. I=mr^2, angular velocity = w... so

my I initial was (10g)(24 cm^2) and w=28 rpm. The number

calculated was 161280 g *cm^2. Then I divided by final inertia to

solve for the final angular speed. I found final Inertia by

( 10g +2g)(24 cm^2)=6912. I then found the new angular speed to

be 23.3 rpm. This was wrong...what did I do incorrectly?

Student Discussion (cont.)[…]

• Student H: :sigh: Wow. So, many, little things, can go wrong in calculating this. Be careful.

[…]

• None of the students commented on Bug being point mass Result being independent of radius No unit conversions needed Several wondered about the “radius of the bug” Plug in numbers asap Nobody just posted the symbolic answer

• Lots of unnecessary pain

Quantitative Research• Classify student discussion contributions• Types:

Emotional Surface Procedural Conceptual

• Features: Unrelated Solution-Oriented Mathematical Physics

Classifying Discussions

Discussions from three introductory physics courses:

Classifying the Problems

• Classifying the problems by question type

• Multiple Choice (incl. Multiple Response) highest percentage of solution-oriented discussions

(“that one is right”) least number of physics discussions

• Ranking and click-on-image problems Physics discussions highest

• Problems with representation-translation (reading a graph, etc): slightly less procedural discussions more negative emotional discussion (complaints)

Degree of Difficulty

• Harder than 0.6: more pain, no gain

Good Students Discuss Better?

Correlations• Force Concept Inventory (FCI)• Pre- and Post-Test

Regression

• PostFCI=5,486+0,922•PreFCI+0,24 •PercentPhysics

• PostFCI=7,606+0,857•PreFCI-0.042 •PercentSolution

• Meaning what?

• Students who contribute 100% solution-oriented discussions on the average have 4.2 points (out of 30) less on the post-test, controlling for pre-test

Sustainability

Usage = Responsibility• Graph shows student

course enrollments at MSU

• Approximately 45,000 student/course enrollments systemwide

• 118 institutions

• Some responsibility to keep this going

Sustainability

• LON-CAPA is open-source and free

• No license fees• No income stream from that• But:

Two support staff One programmer Hardware User support Training Conferences …

Sustainability

• Sustainability Grant funding Commercial Spin-Off LON-CAPA Academic Consortium

Grant Funding

• Over the last decade, LON-CAPA and its predecessors attracted approx. $4M in grants and sponsorships

• Not a reliable source of income• Problem: you can get money for doing

something new, never for the upkeep of something existing

• This is not really a sustainability concept

Spin-Off

• eduCog, LLC• Founded 2005• Hosting LON-CAPA for

2 Universities 32 Schools 6 Publishing

Companies

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Academic Consortium

• Founding members: Michigan State University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Associate Member: Simon Fraser University

• Total commitments of $2.15M over the next five years

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QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

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Conference

• 10th Annual Conference and Workshop

• Simon Fraser University, Burnaby (Vancouver)

• May 22nd-24th, 2008

Acknowledgements and Website

• Support provided by National Science Foundation Michigan State University The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Our partner universities

Visit us at http://www.lon-capa.org/