Courses Redesigned to Improve Students' Learning

To increase student success in high-enrollment classes-in terms of course access, academic achievement, and a sense of feeling engaged-four courses were recently redesigned to make greater use of online delivery using ANGEL. The redesigned courses are Accounting 211, Biological Science 4, Landscape Architecture 60, and Nutrition 100. The new format was intended to make it possible to offer more sections of high-demand courses, permit more feedback from instructors, increase interaction among students, and help ensure that students master key concepts. The project, called the Courseware Initiative, was a joint effort between the respective academic departments and Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT), a unit of Information Technology Services.

As the Penn State administration began emphasizing our responsibility to be a "student-centered university," it was recognized that the needs of students to enroll in courses required for their majors and to succeed in those courses were not being adequately met. Entry-level courses required for a major were filling up, so that many students could not enroll in them. "Many Penn State students are no longer graduating in four years," said Marilynne Stout, director within TLT. Students who were able to enroll often landed in classes so large that the instructor could not provide individualized feedback or easily identify course trouble spots. According to Stout, such students increasingly lost motivation and attended less frequently.

Also affecting attendance and increasing the time required to graduate is the need for many students to hold jobs while attending school. Stout observed, "Years ago, parents could afford to send their kids to school. Now, because so many students are working in order to pay tuition, we try to find ways to offer classes to them that don't meet the rigid kind of timelines that students had been used to in the past."

Wendy Mahan, TLT instructional designer assigned to the Courseware Initiative, explained that the first step was a needs assessment, involving meeting with the instructors, identifying problems that could be remedied by online delivery, and sitting in on courses. She relied on the instructors for their expertise in the subject matter, "then I gave them suggestions on how to make it more effective in the online environment," she said. "The technology gives them more opportunities as to how they can offer it and to manage their classroom." For example, she observed that in a 700-seat classroom, it would be impossible to split students into collaborative teams during class, but assigning them to teams using ANGEL is "easy to do and easy to monitor."

Mahan said she not only wanted to fix trouble spots, but also capitalize on the strengths of the existing courses. For example, she said, Bonj Szczygiel, who teaches LARCH 60: History of Landscape Architecture, is "a good storyteller. She has such passion for the topic. We didn't want to lose that." Szczygiel had already compiled PowerPoint presentations to accompany her lectures. To allow students to review the material at any time of day, TLT staff synchronized recorded lectures with the images she showed in class, and added animations. Onscreen controls allow students to skip ahead or go back within the material.

In the "BiSci Blood Type Challenge," a send-up of 1980s-style arcade games, students are given a blood type, then must decide which types are compatible with it.

In BiSci 4: Human Biology, to help students grasp scientific concepts, TLT multimedia developer Mark DeLuca added Flash animations to problems written by instructor Michael Troyan. Some of the animations depict how antibodies are triggered, how electrical impulses pass through neuronal circuits, and how blood pressure is measured. Troyan said, "With the addition of assignments in the online version that were not possible in the lecture version, students have been able to interact with each other in ways not possible two years ago." Using ANGEL's communication tools, Troyan periodically asks students to post "muddiest points" to gather feedback on lesson points that are not clear. He can then adjust the online text accordingly.

In Acctg 211: Financial and Managerial Accounting for Decision Making, Mahan said the objective of instructor Ken Pasch was to tie together what students were, until then, only learning in pieces. "He was afraid they weren't getting the big picture," she said. "So we developed the case study." Text and photos were combined to create story problems using accounting concepts, centered around a fictional character running a business.

When the course was taught in a traditional format, said Mahan, there was one instructor, a thousand students, and six teaching assistants. Grading was based solely on four exams. He assigned homework, including readings, learning accounting terminology, and learning to use Excel-a requirement in the next level of accounting. Unfortunately, because Pasch was unable to monitor and grade the homework, most students did not complete it, and some reached the next level unable to use Excel. Pasch had to spend the bulk of class time explaining terms instead of moving on to their application, which was the most important aspect of the course.

Several ANGEL tools were called into play to ease these problems. A weekly ANGEL chapter quiz and lab quiz are now administered. Student teams must place their solutions to case study problems into an ANGEL drop box in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. Message boards and chat rooms enhance communication between students and TAs, and between TAs and Pasch. Because ANGEL helps track homework and quizzes, he has now reduced the number of exams from four to three, and the number of weekly lectures from three to two.

Mahan noted that the redesign using ANGEL "just brought it all together, as far as monitoring students' progress, holding them accountable, and keeping up with the pace of the course." Pasch said, "There is no reason for a student to do poorly in this course unless they choose not to avail themselves of the opportunities we have provided. I believe both comprehension and retention of the subject matter has been improved."

When approaching the redesign of a course, one challenge Mahan noted was helping instructors understand the difference between face-to-face and online teaching. She said, "They have that urge to basically put a textbook online, and they're not thinking of active learning or interacting with the students or the students interacting with each other." In addition, she says, sequencing and building up layers of knowledge are important. The instructors realize they cannot say, "Oops, I forgot to mention this," said Mahan. "Everything has to be there." She added, "It's a learning experience in adapting their content and in actually teaching the course, but everything ends up very positive and they're anxious to teach more online courses." Once the redesigned courses were piloted, they were evaluated by the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence. Of foremost interest to the assessment team was whether student outcomes for online courses were at least equal to those in the face-to-face versions of the same course. In addition, they investigated what worked well and what could be improved upon. The evaluation process included interviews of the instructors before and after the redesign, and mid-semester and post-semester student surveys.

According to assessment team member Suzanne Weinstein, Schreyer Institute research associate and program manager, the students performed "as well" in the new format, as gauged by exam scores, pretests, and posttests. In terms of more detailed findings, a high percentage of students reported that the PowerPoint slides, images, online quizzes, study guides, and video clips helped them to learn material. A major advantage listed by both students and instructors was the flexibility to work when and where it was most convenient. As one student commented, "I was involved with two internships that took up my days, and I would not have been able to take this course, and therefore fulfill my Gen Ed requirements for graduation. I was also able to go at my own pace, work ahead if I had a busy week coming up or take it slow if I wanted."

During the spring 2005 semester, more than thirty Penn State courses are being offered online, according to TLT senior director John Harwood, and a handful of high-enrollment courses offer alternatives to the traditional schedule of face-to-face meetings. He said, "Penn State is committed to enriching and personalizing students' undergraduate experience."