Supplementing Classroom Instruction
with On-line Learning Opportunities
David Reuman
Report on ITEC Course Development Grant
Spring 2014
Course Context
PSYC 221
Research Design and Analysis in Psychology
• Foundation course for Psychology majors
• Meets Numerical and Symbolic Reasoning
distribution requirement
• Taught every semester with 25-35 students
• Class meets 3 times per week
Goals for Enhancing Student Learning
through Technology
By supplementing classroom instruction with online learning opportunities, students may
• Re-listen to portions of lectures that were initially
unclear
• Re-integrate concepts after hearing initial lecture,
completing assigned reading or problem set
• Encounter course content from a new perspective
• Process additional examples
Examples of On-line Supplements
• Narrated slide-shows
“Survey Sampling: How Representative is that Sample?”
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEE4D4FFF2F319216
“Wealth Inequality: Importance of the Shape of a Distribution”
http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrongabout-this-mind-blowing-fact-2
• Modules from Carnegie Mellon “Open Learning
Initiative” for a course on statistical reasoning
http://oli.cmu.edu
Specific OLI Modules Used
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•
•
•
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1: Measures of central tendency and variability
6: Normal distributions
7: Sampling distributions and the central limit theorem
9: Confidence intervals for a population mean
10: Hypothesis testing – Type I and Type II errors
10: Hypothesis testing for the population mean
11: Hypothesis testing – Two independent means and
matched pairs
• 11: 1-Factor ANOVA
• 2: Correlation (Linear relationships)
Did The OLI Supplement
Make a Difference to Students?
“How often this semester did you visit the Open
Learning Initiative (OLI) website for “Statistical
Reasoning”?
• 26 percent (6/23) never visited
• 74 percent (17/23) visited, ranging from once
to more than 5 times
Did The OLI Supplement
Make a Difference to Students?
“How often did you answer questions posted on
the OLI website and get online feedback”?
• 48 percent (11/23) never sought feedback
• 52 percent (12/23) did, ranging from once to
more than 5 times
Did The OLI Supplement
Make a Difference to Students?
“If you visited the OLI website at least once, how
helpful did you find the OLI modules”?
Not helpful at all
Minimally helpful
Somewhat helpful
Very helpful
Extremely helpful
6 percent
18 percent
47 percent
29 percent
0 percent
Did OLI Modules Increase Absenteeism?
Apparently not.
• Absenteeism was not significantly different in
Spring 2013 semester (without OLI) compared
to Fall 2013 semester (with OLI).
• Number of visits to OLI website was not
significantly correlated with (self-reported)
number of missed class meetings.
Did OLI Use Improve Student Performance?
Unclear.
• Number of visits to OLI website, whether a
student used the OLI website to get feedback,
and student evaluations of the helpfulness of
the OLI website were all uncorrelated with
students’ expected grades.
Next Steps
Repeat this trial.
Develop original online modules for course
topics that students find difficult, but for which
no modules currently exist.
Involve teaching assistants as module
developers.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Lisa Dierker and Wesleyan’s summer
2011 workshop on “Inquiry-Based Approaches
to Statistics”.
Thanks to ITEC for a course development grant.
Thanks to Jean-Pierre Haeberly for adding
special items to the online course evaluation for
PSYC 221.