Nicole Vogt » Distance Educational Development
American universities currently have few extended learning (distance education) resources in the physical sciences. It is particularly challenging to provide laboratory science exercises that can be completed without an instructor on hand, without a peer group to share ideas, and without a laboratory full of equipment!
Providing distance access to a core curriculum can broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in higher education, by allowing greater scheduling flexibility (in time, as well as in location). It can also draw in underserved individuals who would otherwise have no viable opportunity to consider a career in the sciences. We thus are strongly motivated to provide additional physical science resources at the general education level.
I have obtained NASA and NSF funding to begin developing a distance learning course in general astronomy for undergraduates (and for junior and senior high school students, under a concurrent enrollment model). The key components, outlined below, also offer an opportunity for graduate students with a strong interest in education to participate in educational development and outreach activities.
- I have created a secure online database of 6,400+ comprehension questions for interactive self-review, keyed to weekly reading and discussion material. The archive is large enough that a student can retake short quizzes multiple times, always with new problems, in order to master the material. Quizzes contain both hints and worked solutions for every problem, cross-linked into HTML lecture notes so that incorrect answers will lead students back to key material for immediate review. The database allows random selection of questions from a large reservoir, performs automatic grading in real time, and creates a complete record of all student attempts (including the details of incorrect answers) in a searchable format for instructors.
- Instructors can track student progresses through the database as a function of date, or by topic. The number of problems attempted and scores are provided in tabular and in figure format, for easy analysis. In addition, the instructor can view a recreation of every quiz attempted by each student, including the timing and scoring, and the submitted answers. Trends can be tracked for a group, in order to identify which material is most challenging and to evaluate whether lectures and laboratory assignments are working together to promote comprehension of specific topics.
- I employ computer-based and independent laboratory experiments that can be conducted remotely, and both remote and on-site observation sessions, taking advantage of New Mexico's clear, unpolluted southwestern skies to teach basic celestial mechanics and to introduce the history of astronomical observations as practiced in varied cultures. A remote laboratory exercise on the Parallax Effect is being field-tested by students at present.
- I have recorded and annotated audio for a full semester of lectures and laboratory sessions, coupled to lecture notes via the eTEACH model and augmented by astronomical animations and hand-drawn diagrams. Selected additional segments will be filmed on-site at observatories, and short interview segments will introduce our students to astronomers throughout the worldwide community. Audio lecture recordings are currently available for download to students, and will be on offer as streamed audio at iTunes University in Fall 2008.
The 6,400+ question self-review database was introduced as a supplement for the classroom version of ASTR110G in Spring 2006, Fall 2006, and Fall 2007 where students used it as a general tool for studying. The response was extremely favorable, with a total of 7,230 quizzes taken by 170 students over three semesters. This corresponds to an average of 43 quizzes per student (versus five in class, hand-graded quizzes each). Students cited the immediate feedback (24/7), with worked solutions for all math problems, the ability to focus repeatedly on a single difficult concept, and the wide breadth of topics covered as extremely helpful aspects.
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| The cumulative number of self-review quizzes taken by non-science undergraduates in a general astronomy course over the course of a semester, separated by gender. (The male student response has been rescaled so that it would match the female student response if all students took the same number of quizzes, so the gap between the two lines reflects a higher usage rate per student among women.) Yellow bands indicate the weeks in which midterm and final exams were held. We observe a sharp upturn in self-review work before the first exam, strongest in the female group. By the time of the final exam virtually all students were fully engaged in the database, having perceived its utility in the aftermath of the midterm exam. |
As shown above, students made extensive use of the database as a study resource for the midterm and final exams (yellow bands), with their usage increasing dramatically with time. Female students were early and strong adapters, which is unusual and encouraging for a new-technology resource.
The next figure shows the average accuracy of student attempts (top relation), separated by gender, for the entire series of 26 lectures. The dips at lectures 20 and 24, strong for both genders, are caused by the inclusion of algebraic material, which is quite challenging for students without a solid mathematical background. The database contains thousands of sample mathematics questions, with complete worked solutions for every problem, to allow students to gain confidence in their math skills.
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| Student scores as a function of 26 astronomical lecture topics, separated by gender and running from 0 to 100% (top), and the relative number of students of each gender who used the self-review system for each lecture topic (bottom). By the end of the semester, 93% of all female students and 85% of all male students were using the self-review system a significant amount. |
The lower relation shows the relative number of students of each gender who used the database to review each lecture topic. We engaged 93% of our female students in the material by the end of the course, meaning that they all routinely used the database to study, with the male response trailing by 8%.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0349155. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).