LON-CAPA Overview and Experiences Michigan State University VIPP Gerd Kortemeyer Summer 2007

Research Projects LearningOnline Network with CAPA (LON-CAPA) Resource Sharing and Course Management Communities of Practice Sustainability Physics Education Research Some Old Results Discussion Analysis

NSF Project NSF Information Technology Research Investigation of a Model for Online Resource Creation and Sharing in
Educational 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

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

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

LON-CAPA Architecture Campus A Campus B Course Management Course Management Resource Assembly Resource Assembly 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 … One XML/LaTeX Source Code Online Print

Shared Resource Library … or simulations and animations …

Shared Resource Library … 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 Dynamic Graphing

Shared Resource Library Total holdings and sharing

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

Resource Assembly Shopping Cart “Supermarket”

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

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

Dynamic Metadata Verteilte Inhaltsbibliothek über Campusgrenzen hinaus Campus A Verteilte Inhaltsbibliothek über Campusgrenzen hinaus Inhalts -zusammenstellungs -werkzeuge Kursverwaltungssystem Campus B

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

Selection Help Assembling materials for a course Sorted by access count

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

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 Communication

Course Management Exams

Course Management Different exam for every student

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)

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 Determine who uses material from whom

Sharing Communities Findings

Sustainability

Usage = Responsibility Graph shows student course enrollments at MSU Approximately 40,000 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 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

Some OLD Results - Still True

Time On Task

Exam and Course Grades Before and After

Gender Differential phy231: without CAPA phy232: with CAPA 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

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

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/