Session L14: Impacts and Experiences with Hybrid and Online Courses

Fully On-line Introductory Physics with a Lab

We describe the development and implementation of a college-level introductory physics (mechanics) course and laboratory that is suited for both on-campus and on-line environments. The course emphasizes a “Your World is Your Lab” approach whereby students first examine and capture on video (using cellphones) motion in their immediate surroundings, and then use free, open-source software both to extract data from the video and to apply physics principles to build models that describe, predict, and visualize the observations. Each student reports findings by creating a video lab report and posting it online; these video lab reports are then distributed to the rest of the class for peer review. In this talk, we will discuss the student and instructor experiences in courses offered to three distinct audiences in different venues: (1) a Massively Open On-line Course (MOOC) for off-campus participants, (2) a flipped/blended course for on-campus students, and, most recently, (3) a fully-online course for off-campus students.   

A Flipped Pedagogy for Expert Problem Solving

The internet provides free learning opportunities for declarative (Wikipedia, YouTube) and procedural (Kahn Academy, MOOCs) knowledge, challenging colleges to provide learning at a higher cognitive level. Our ``Modeling Applied to Problem Solving"\footnote{\underline{Modeling Applied to Problem Solving}, Pawl, A., et. al. ,\textit{AIP Conference Proceedings} 1179 2009 Physics Education Research Conference, pp. 51-54, (2009)} \footnote{\underline{Improved Student Performance In Electricity And Magnetism Following Prior MAPS Instruction In Mechanics}, Rayyan, S eet. al. Physics Education Research Conference 2010 AIP Conf. Proc. 1289, 273(2010).} pedagogy for Newtonian Mechanics imparts \textit{strategic knowledge} - how to systematically determine which concepts to apply and why. Declarative and procedural knowledge is learned online before class via an e-text, checkpoint questions, and homework on edX.org (see \underline{http://relate.mit.edu/physicscourse}); it is organized into five Core Models. Instructors then coach students on simple ``touchstone problems", novel exercises, and multi-concept problems - meanwhile exercising three of the four C's: communication, collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving. Students showed 1.2 standard deviations improvement on the MIT final exam after three weeks instruction, a significant positive shift in 7 of the 9 categories in the CLASS, and their grades improved by 0.5 standard deviation in their following physics course (Electricity and Magnetism).   

Online activities to optimize in person learning.

Students' unprecedented access to content on the web is providing a unique opportunity to transform the role lectures in education, moving the focus from content delivery to helping students synthesize the content into knowledge. We have introduced a variety of activities to facilitate this transformation at the University of Illinois, including web-based preflight assessments of student understanding before lecture, peer instruction (clickers) to assess and facilitate student understanding during lecture, and web-based multimedia pre-lectures designed to provide students with content before lecture. In this talk I will discuss the pedagogical motivation for introducing these activities, and the impact they have had at the University of Illinois. .   

Lessons from two decades of hybrid and online physics courses at Michigan State University

In Fall 1992, at Michigan State University we first offered online homework to one section of an introductory physics course; students received randomized assignments as printouts and entered answers through Telnet sessions, frequently using text terminals. Now, over two decades later, all of our introductory physics courses have significant online components, and students can chose between different formats, including hybrid courses with free online textbook materials, as well as courses that are completely online. What have we learned over the years about which formats are most effective for which students? What are the respective learning outcomes? Which logistical models work best for homework, exams, videos, and textbook materials? What about academic integrity? In our talk we will reflect on how our courses have been developing over the years, report educational research results, relate anecdotes and experiences, and point out pitfalls that we have encountered.   

Apples vs. Oranges: Comparison of Student Performance in a MOOC vs. a Brick-and-Mortar Class

In the fall of 2013, my colleagues and I taught the calculus-based introductory physics course to 800 tuition-paying students at the University of Colorado at Boulder. At the same time we taught a free massive open online version of the same course (MOOC), through Coursera.com. The initial enrollment in the MOOC was 10,000 students, of whom 255 completed the course. Students in both courses received identical lectures with identical embedded clicker questions, identical homework assignments, and identical timed exams. We present data on participation rates and exam performance for the two groups. We find that the MOOC is like a drug targeted at a very specific population. When it works, it works well, but it works for very few students. This MOOC worked well for older, well-educated students, who already had a good understanding of Newtonian mechanics.