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

2. 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

3. NSF Project NSF Information Technology Research
Investigation of a Model for Online Resource Creation and Sharing in
Educational Settings
September August 2006
$2.1M
Model system: LON-CAPA

4. Resource Sharing

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

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

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

10. Shared Resource Library
LON-CAPA currently links 118 institutions in eight countries

11. 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

12. Shared Resource Library
Resources may be web pages …

13. Shared Resource Library
… with math in them …
One XML/LaTeX Source Code
Online
Print

14. Shared Resource Library
… or simulations and animations …

15. Shared Resource Library
… or this kind of randomizing online problems

16. Shared Resource Library
…special emphasis on math …

17. Shared Resource Library
… chemistry …

18. Shared Resource Library
… physical units …

19. Shared Resource Library
Dynamic Graphing

20. Shared Resource Library
Total holdings and sharing

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

22. Resource Assembly
Shopping Cart
“Supermarket”

23. 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

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

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

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

27. Selection Help Assembling materials for a course
Sorted by access count

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

29. 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

30. Course Management

31. Course Management
Student homework progress

32. Course Management
Question Analysis

33. Course Management
Communication

34. Course Management
Exams

35. Course Management
Different exam for every student

36. Communities of Practice

37. User Institutions Increasing number of institutions
Unexpected growths at K-12 schools

38. 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

39. Sharing Communities Online communities of practice
Contributors versus users (institutions)

40. Sharing Communities
Work done with FernUni Hagen using LON-CAPA data set
Data from
learning resources
539 authors
2275 courses
2120 course instructors

41. Sharing Communities
Determine who uses material from whom

42. Sharing Communities
Findings

43. Sustainability

44. Usage = Responsibility
Graph shows student course enrollments at MSU
Approximately 40,000 student/course enrollments systemwide
118 institutions
Some responsibility to keep this going

45. 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 …

46. Sustainability Sustainability Commercial Spin-Off
LON-CAPA Academic Consortium

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

48. 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

49. Some OLD Results - Still True

50. Time On Task

51. Exam and Course Grades
Before and After

52. Gender Differential phy231: without CAPA phy232: with CAPA
Seen in studies at three other universities

53. Discussion Analysis

54. Discussions

55. 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?

56. Solution No external torque, angular momentum is conserved
Bug is small compared to disk, can be seen as point mass

57. 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

58. 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?

59. 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

60. 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

61. … 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

62. Qualitative Research
Analyze students’ understanding of a certain concept
Find student misconceptions
Identify certain problem solving strategies
Evaluate online resources

63. Quantitative Research
Classify student discussion contributions
Types:
Emotional
Surface
Procedural
Conceptual
Features:
Unrelated
Solution-Oriented
Mathematical
Physics

64. Classifying Discussions
Discussions from three introductory physics courses:

65. 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)

66. Degree of Difficulty
Harder than 0.6: more pain, no gain

67. Good Students Discuss Better?

68. Correlations
Force Concept Inventory (FCI)
Pre- and Post-Test

69. Regression PostFCI=5,486+0,922•PreFCI+0,24 •PercentPhysics
PostFCI=7,606+0,857•PreFCI •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

70. 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