Ray Batchelor

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General Chemistry Homework CAPA to LON-CAPA
Ray Batchelor Lee Hanlan Fred Chin and many
others
Academic Computing Services Martin Siegert
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CAPA
History

• General Chem I Lec. 96-03 6150 students
• Intro. Chem. Lecture 97-02 1240 students
  
• Gen. Chem II Lec. 97-03 3250 students
• Gen. Chem I Pre-lab 98-03 4080 students
• Upper Level Courses 98-00 210 students

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Benefits
CAPA

• Automatic grading
• Individualized questions -- no copying
• Immediate feedback and multiple attempts
  --Students rework problem until they get it.
• Can monitor and assess student or class progress
  at any time.
• Enhanced by and linked with related resources.
  (Course web pages, BBS, my.sfu.ca, maillists
  etc...) (extra work)

Thousands servedopen 24 hours.
cHomework
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Instructor Student Interactions
CAPA
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Summer 2002 Gen Chem II Students
Did CAPA help you? 80 affirmative (20 strongly
so), 15 negative, 5 no comment. How could
CAPA be improved? No changes needed.
(numerous) More hints Conditional
hints Fewer simultaneous response type
questions. Get rid of true/false
questions. Show correct answer when tries run
out. Have tutorials on or immediately
before due dates. Real-time, online
tutoring near due time. More tutors
Make sure material is taught before due
date. Difficult compared to exams and lecture.

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More suggestions
Part marks. More diversity in individualized
questions. More theory/concept-based
questions. Needs cartoons or comic strips? More
Refs to text. Refs to lecture notes. Further
restrict num of tries. (was 15) Make the homework
shorter or worth more. Less questions More
questions! Go back to hand marking written
assignments ???
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CAPA
But, in 10 random samples there is only a 3.5
chance that a particular salt will be missed! (a
little less than 1 in 21).
54,264 combinations of 6 salts selected from 21
For a particular question there are potentially
36 729 different answers.
Suppose that a dozen students who have found
their correct answers made them all available to
the remaining students

• Challenging to solve.
• Hard to guess.

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Web Bulletin board
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Policing the Web??

• Stop the conference? No way.
• Censor the conference? No.
• Deduct marks from those who paste answers? no
  good unless automated
• Make postings to the conference of finite
  persistence -- say 12 hours? self-defeating
• Suspend conference privileges for those who cut
  and paste answers? Perhaps.

Put cheated-on questions on the final exam!
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Move the Goalposts

• Decrease the number of allowed triesmaybe
• Increase of samples to select fromperhaps
• Change the number of foils shown for the
  question possibly reduce to 4...
• Randomize over different question and answer
  formats Yes.
• More online help for difficult questions

Objective is to ASSIST the students to succeed
-- on their own --
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LON-CAPA
Problem adapted from Zumdahl, Chemical
Principles 4th ed. c. Houghton Mifflin Co.,
Boston MA Permission Granted.
Meta data
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LON-CAPA
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CAPA
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LON-CAPA
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LON-CAPA
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The Game changed!
LON-CAPA

• Intro. Chem. Pre-lab 01-04 250 students
  
• Intro. Chem. Lec 02-04 415
  students
• Org. Chem I Pre-lab 02-04 980 students
• General Chem I Lec 03-04 1015 students
• Gen. Chem I Pre-lab 03-04 890 students
• General Chem II Lec 2004-1 310 students

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(No Transcript)
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(No Transcript)
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Survey of Gen Chem Students Dec 2003
LON-CAPA

• On-lineSurvey
• In-classSurvey

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General Chem Dec 2003
LON-CAPA

• On-lineSurvey
• In-classSurvey

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General Chem Dec 2003
LON-CAPA

• On-lineSurvey
• In-classSurvey

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General Chem Dec 2003
LON-CAPA

• On-lineSurvey
• In-classSurvey
• Actual Stats

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General Chem Dec 2003
LON-CAPA

• On-lineSurvey
• In-classSurvey

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General Chem Dec 2003
LON-CAPA

• On-lineSurvey
• In-classSurvey

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General Chem Dec 2003
LON-CAPA

• On-lineSurvey
• In-classSurvey

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General Chem Dec 2003
LON-CAPA

• On-lineSurvey
• In-classSurvey

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If you could change one thing about the LONCAPA
homework, what would that be?
LON-CAPA
General Student Comments 70 very favorable 25
neutral 5 unfavorable

• 30 would change very little or nothing.
• 25 easier questions / more like the exams
• 15 more hints,conditional hints, text refs
• 10 more tries
• 7 change due dates in some way
• 5 browser issues
• 4 dont like optionresponse questions
• 3 more marks/effort

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Hardware and Support
LON-CAPA

• Library Server Purchased May 2001, dual 1GHz
  IBM
• http//dalton.chem.sfu.ca Netfinity x340,
  1 GB RAM, 3x18.2 GB Raid
• 2 Access Servers Purchased March 2003, each
  dual 2.4 GHz lewis and nernst
  Xeon cpus, 4 GB RAM, 1x120 GB Drive
• Chemistry Servers housed in ACS main vault and
  fully supported.
• Martin Siegert Systems Administrator, Research
  Computing
• SFU
  Academic Computing Services (ACS)

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Credits
CAPA
LON-CAPA

• Ralph Korteling
• John DAuria
• Derek Sutton
• Ross Hill
• Steve Holdcroft
• Gary Leach
• Andrew Bennet
• Evelyn Palmer
• Noham Weinberg
• Jimmy Low
• J.P. Bravo
• Jennifer Wolf
• Gerardo Diaz
• Sam Yan (Brandon U.)
• Fred Chin
• Ian Courtney
• Mike Lauritzen

• Lee Hanlan
• Sophie Lavieri
• Ken MacFarlane
• R. Dev Sharma
• Zuo-Guang Ye
• Julie Lunniss
• Khashayar Ghandi
• Uwe Kreis
• Jason Clyburne
• Michael Eikerling
• Paul Percival
• Garry Mund
• Monica Szczepina
• Martin Siegert (ACS)

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RES
LON-CAPA

• gt
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• gt
• gt

• Intro Gen

• Gen Chem

• Org Pre-Labs U.Kreis

• Intro Chem Lab Procedures

• Math Dept.