Research Projects Overview Gerd Kortemeyer December 2006

Research Projects LearningOnline Network with CAPA (LON-CAPA)  Resource Sharing  Communities of Practice  Sustainability Physics Education Research  Discussion analysis  Student attitudes, beliefs, and expectations Outlook  Curriculum development  Next generation clickers

NSF Project NSF Information Technology Research Investigation of a Model for Online Resource Creation and Sharing in Educational Settings September August 2006 $2.1M

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

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 Assembly Course Management Resource Assembly Course 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 …

14 … or this kind of randomizing online problems Shared Resource Library

…special emphasis on math

Shared Resource Library … chemistry …

Shared Resource Library … physical units …

Shared Resource Library Authored more than 1200 online resources (problems, images, pages) for lbs271/lbs272

Shared Resource Library Total holdings and sharing AvailableUsedUsed Externally Images Problems Web Pages Reusable Content Assemblies Animations and Simulations Movies and Sound Files Other (MS Office, etc) Total

Campus A Campus B LON-CAPA Architecture Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library Resource Assembly Course Management Resource 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

23 Resource Assembly Writes module about energy conservation Writes module about momentum conservation Compiles modules about conservation laws Use whole assembly in his course

Campus A Campus B LON-CAPA Architecture Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library Resource Assembly Course Management Resource Assembly 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 Inhaltsbibliothek über Campusgrenzen hinaus Inhalts -zusammenstellungs -werkzeuge Inhalts -zusammenstellungs -werkzeuge Kursverwaltungssystem Inhalts -zusammenstellungs -werkzeuge Inhalts -zusammenstellungs -werkzeuge Kursverwaltungssystem

27 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 2006 Conference at MSU in Lyman- Briggs School 2007 Conference will be at UIUC Several workshops per year

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 Individual authors

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

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  Commercial Spin-Off  LON-CAPA Academic Consortium

Spin-Off eduCog, LLC Founded 2005 Hosting LON-CAPA for  2 Universities  32 Schools  6 Publishing Companies

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

PER: Discussion Analysis

Discussions

Problem A bug that has a mass m b =4g walks from the center to the edge of a disk that is freely turning at 32rpm. The disk has a mass of m d =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

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 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

… 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+0,922PreFCI+0,24 PercentPhysics PostFCI=7,606+0,857PreFCI 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

PER: Attitudes, Expectations

Attitudes and Expectations Reactions to statements

Attitudes and Expectations Premeds versus engineers on survey clusters Percentage favorable answers

Outlook

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

Pending NSF CCLI with faculty from Human Medicine and Medical Technology

Next Generation Clickers Using LON-CAPA in the lecture hall “Next generation clickers”

Next Generation Clickers Method:  Ask question  If answer spectrum not satisfactory, have students discuss  Ask question again Result: improvement in spectrum But: with traditional clickers, all students have the same problem Nobody ever analyzed the peer-discussions Improvement because others just go along with strongest/most confident student?

Had submitted grant together with Eric Mazur at Harvard Not funded Try again and/or do anyway Done Next Generation Clickers

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