Scientifically Informed WebBased Instruction

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Scientifically Informed Web-Based Instruction
Candace Thille, Director of OLI

• Financial and Intellectual Support
• The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
• Carnegie Mellon University through the Office of
  Technology for Education and the Eberly Center
  for Teaching Excellence

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• Improvement in post-secondary education will
  require converting teaching from a solo sport
  to a community-based research activity
• Herb Simon, Nobel Laureate
• Last Lecture Series, Carnegie Mellon, 1998

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What Is a Community Based Research Activity in
Teaching?

• Theory-based
• Evaluation and Feedback Loops
• Diversity of Perspective, Roles Contexts

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Open Learning Initiative
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Build on Experiential Knowledge

• Learners build on informal and experiential
  knowledge to understand complex concepts and
  skills

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What is a Cognitive Tutor?

• A computerized learning environment whose design
  is based on cognitive principles and whose
  interaction with students is based on that of a
  (human) tutori.e., making comments when the
  student errs, answering questions about what to
  do next, and maintaining a low profile when the
  student is performing well.

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Cognitive Scaffolding

• Learners request support and receive timely and
  targeted feedback in the problem-solving context

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Transcript of Student Solving Data Analysis
Problem
Oh, okay. Um, I'm not really sure if- do I need
to uh we can just, like, graph it, right? Uh
line plot, I guess. oh, uh histograms, bar
charts maybe a boxplot? Uh, no... Uh, uh
histogram, um data table, umin statistics class
that always worked when you got stuck, just make
a boxplot, and see what happened. So uh, I'll
boxplot them, um, y by x. bleep Uh oh, it says
the variable rank has 30 categories, shall I
continue? Usually that was bad, so I cancel that,
because it shouldn't come out like that
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Conceptual Framework

• Learners integrate their discrete skills and
  concepts into a meaningful big picture

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Multiple Representations

• Learners work with the material in various
  formats and build meaningful connections among
  the representations

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Virtual Experiments
Typical textbook problem When 10ml of 1M A was
mixed with 10ml of 1M B, the temperature went up
by 10 degrees. What is the heat of the reaction
between A and B?
Virtual lab problem Camping 1 Construct an
experiment to measure the heat of reaction
between A and B?

• Students who could perform the textbook
  procedure, had difficulty designing the
  experiment.
• The Virtual lab format prevents students from
  using strategy of matching words to equations.

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OLI Chemistry Course Goals

• Promote flexibility and applicability
• From mathematical procedures to chemical
  phenomena (use in chemistry) - Virtual
  laboratory
• From chemical phenomena to real world (transfer
  to real world) - Scenario based learning
• Promote coherence
• Big picture of chemistry

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Scenario-based Learning

• Learners apply skills and concepts to solve
  authentic real world problems

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Embedded Assessment and Feedback

• One of the most powerful features of
  technology-enhanced learning environments is that
  they can facilitate on-going formative assessment
  and feedback embedded within everyday
  instructional activities
• By feedback we refer to corrections,
  suggestions and cues that are tailored to the
  individuals current performance and that
  encourage revision and refinement.

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Feedback Loops in Learning
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Learning Curve Analysis on Stoichiometry Data
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Evaluation

• Chemistry Significant positive correlation for
  the OLI treatment. Most significant indicator was
  time spent in Virtual Lab Activities.
• Biology Significant and positive correlation
  between students time spent working on
  activities and performance on quiz questions
  testing the corresponding topics
• Statistics Students in OLI only section and
  accelerated Learning section performed as well or
  better than students in traditional instruction

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End of Course survey for accelerated online

• 85 Definitely Recommend
• 15 Probably Recommend
• 0 Probably not Recommend
• 0 Definitely not Recommend

Student Quote "This is so much better than
reading a textbook or listening to a lecture! My
mind didnt wander, and I was not bored while
doing the lessons. I actually learned something."
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Feedback Loop Current Research
Instructors can use such data to adjust their
teaching to students needs.
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System Supports Faculty

• Instructor assigns students to work through
  online instruction
• System collects data as students work
• System automatically analyzes and organizes the
  data to present instructor with the students
  current learning state
• Instructor reviews this data and adapts
  instruction accordingly

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The Benefits

• Students receive immediate feedback to monitor
  and adjust their learning
• Instructors have a window onto students progress
  and can adapt their teaching accordingly
• Strengthens the student-instructor connection

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Core OLI Community

• Faculty Content Experts
• Learning Scientists
• Human Computer Interaction
• Software Engineers
• Evaluation/Assessment Specialists
• Learners
• .

A community of scholars from diverse disciplines
committed to improving quality and access to
instruction. The collaborative nature of the OLI
course design process inspired participating
faculty to rethink their approach to classroom
teaching
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Extended Community

• OLI depends on a diverse community of faculty and
  learners
• OLI Workshops in USA, Qatar, Mexico
• OLI Tools and support for adapting, localizing
  content
• Formal and informal evaluation
• Carnegie Foundation KEEP Toolkit - document
  scholarship of teaching

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Feedback from Evaluation

• The success of the implementation of the OLI
  course materials, in terms of learning gains and
  a renewed student enthusiasm for statistics, led
  the Department of Psychology at Universidad de
  los Andes to completely change the instructional
  sequence in research methodology .

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• Improvement in post-secondary education will
  require converting teaching from a solo sport
  to a community-based research activity
• Herbert Simon
• www.cmu.edu/oli
• cthille_at_cmu.edu