Experiences with using online materials and homework in a lecture-
based introductory physics course
University of Colorado
Gerd Kortemeyer
April 2007
Research Projects
• LearningOnline Network with CAPA (LON-CAPA) Resource Sharing Communities of Practice Sustainability
• Physics Education Research Some Old Results Discussion analysis Student attitudes, beliefs, and expectations Curriculum development
NSF Project
• NSF Information Technology Research
• Investigation of a Model for Online Resource Creation and Sharing inEducational Settings
• September 2000 - August 2006
• $2.1M
• Model system: LON-CAPA
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 106 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
• … 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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Shared Resource Library
• … chemistry …
Shared Resource Library
• … physical units …
Shared Resource Library• Dynamic Graphing
Shared Resource Library
• Total holdings and sharing
Available Used Used Externally
Images 88079 18262 9629
Problems 80009 57979 23816
Web Pages 57972 5888 2949
Reusable Content Assemblies
7405 3184 1299
Animations and Simulations 1575 507 338
Movies and Sound Files 742 326 105
Other (MS Office, etc) 11302 2484 674
Total 247084 88630 38810
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
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
Campus A Campus B
Dynamic Metadata
Verteilte Inhaltsbibliotheküber Campusgrenzen hinaus
Inhalts-zusammenstellungs
-werkzeuge
Inhalts-zusammenstellungs
-werkzeuge
KursverwaltungssystemKursverwaltungssystem
Inhalts-zusammenstellungs
-werkzeuge
Inhalts-zusammenstellungs
-werkzeuge
KursverwaltungssystemKursverwaltungssystem
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• Dynamic metadata from usage• Assistance in resource selection („amazon.com“)• Quality control
Dynamic Metadata
Communities of Practice
User Institutions
• Increasing number of institutions
• Unexpected growths at K-12 schools
Conferences
• Annual user Conferences
• 2007 Conference will be at UIUC
• 2008 Conference at SFU
• Several workshops per year
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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)
Sharing Communities• Work done with FernUni Hagen using
LON-CAPA data set
• Data from 253972 learning resources 539 authors 2275 courses 2120 course instructors
Sharing Communities
• Authors with the most contributions
Sharing Communities
• Actually used resources
• Normalized Contribution Popularity
Sharing Communities
• Co-Contribution Association
Sharing Communities
• Summary
Sustainability
Usage = Responsibility
• Graph shows student course enrollments at MSU
• Approximately 35,000 student/course enrollments systemwide
• 106 institutions
• Some responsibility to keep this going
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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 Commercial Spin-Off LON-CAPA Academic Consortium
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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Some OLD Results - Still True
Time On Task
Prüfungs- und Kursnoten
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
Where Online Homework Fails• Online homework can give both students and
faculty a false sense of security and accomplishment
• Most students got this problem correct … but at what cost? … how much physics have they really learned?
• This would not have remained undetected in hand-graded homework
• But copying is rampant in hand-graded homework - do you really see the student’s work?
• No human resources to grade weekly homework for 200 students
… at the same time:
• If you want to know how students really go about solving problems, this is the ideal tool: Every student has a different version, so the
discussion is not just an exchange of answers All discussions are automatically contextual Students transcribe their own discussion - compare
this to the cost of taping and transcribing verbal discussions
Discussions are genuine, since the students have a genuine interest in solving the problems in the way that they perceive to be the most efficient
Qualitative Research
• Analyze students’ understanding of a certain concept
• Find student misconceptions
• Identify certain problem solving strategies
• Evaluate online resources
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
Attitudes, Expectations, and Pre-Meds
Attitudes and Expectations• Reactions to statements
Attitudes and Expectations• LBS students versus engineering students (published data)
on survey clusters
• Percentage favorable answers
Attitudes and Expectations
• So, while the premed course as a whole had different attitudes and expectations than the engineers:
• On an invididual level, do their discussion behavior
and their their performance measures
correlate with MPEX?
Attitudes and Expectations
Not really
Attitudes and Expectations
•Conclusion: Take the Product Warning Label seriously!
Curriculum Development
• It‘s hard to teach physics to pre-meds
• Need good grades but frequently do not believe physics is relevant
• Survey on what would make physics instruction more relevant
• 1=not at all; 3=neutral; 5=very
Curriculum Development
Curriculum Development
• Pending NSF CCLI with faculty from Human Medicine and Medical Technology
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/
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