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Friday, October 25, 2012
American Mathematical Society's Committee on Education
Enhancing Mathematics Education Through Technology: Myth or Reality?
Remarks of Remarks of USM Chancellor William E. Kirwan
Good afternoon. I am very pleased to join the American Mathematical Society's
Committee on Education and math department chairs from around the country to
examine the important and timely issue of the potential for innovative—and
effective—use of technology to improve undergraduate mathematics education. I feel
especially honored to be here because the AMS has played such an important role in
enriching my professional life over the years, especially the first 25 years of my
career as I endeavored to be a serious mathematician. Having gone over to the “dark
side” many years ago, I never thought I would have a chance to engage working
mathematicians again. So, I’m thrilled to be here today.
Before I begin my remarks, however, I want to make a disclaimer. Alexander Pope
reminds us that a “little learning is a dangerous thing.” Well, few things can be more
dangerous than a Chancellor with a “little learning” on a subject. And that describes
me with regard to the topic we are discussing today. Most, if not all of you in this
room know more about the use of technology in the classroom than I do. But, I’m
pleased to have this opportunity to offer some perspectives on this matter from my
vantage point and to describe some of the approaches to the use of technology and
classroom innovations that we have adopted across the 12-campus University System
of Maryland.
What makes this topic so timely in my view is that we are—at this moment—
experiencing a confluence of developments compelling us to conduct a closer
examination of instructional models across the board, including most especially
mathematics.
First, we have the ongoing cost pressures impacting higher education. We all know
that public—and private—institutions are experiencing reduced funding, with no
prospect of a dramatic turn around on the horizon. The rate of tuition increases
we’ve seen in recent years is simply unsustainable, so that’s not a solution for our
revenue problems. At the same time, we’re faced with the need to produce more
college graduates for competitiveness and social equity reasons, which means that, if
we are to meet our responsibilities to the larger society, we must try to find more
cost-effective way of delivering high quality instruction to our students.
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Second, we are seeing remarkable advancements in technology, telecommunications
and software design. The reach and speed of communications technology combined
with the adaptability and flexibility of software offers potential that we are only
beginning to understand. This potential comes both from the sophisticated online
learning platforms and the innovative, adaptive learning capacity of intelligent
software.
Finally, the cognitive research that has occurred over the past few years has
dramatically increased our understanding of how people actually learn, process, and
retain information. We have seen real breakthroughs in understanding the triggers
that imprint information on the brain. The importance of active engagement,
collaboration, and social interaction in learning, which has long been suspected, are
now being confirmed by serious research.
And so we find ourselves at a fascinating time and place: We are deep into the “new
normal” of reduced resources, standing at the crossroads of advances in cognitive
study and the exploding power of technology. From my perspective, these
developments converge to create to exciting potential that we must explore. Indeed,
the possibilities raised by these developments represent one of the most exciting
challenges and opportunities that I have seen in my 50-year career in higher
education.
There is another factor at work that supports the move toward more interactive
classrooms and greater use of technology. This is the nature of the rising generation
of college students. Here I admit the evidence is more anecdotal but it is certainly
consistent with my own observations. This generation of college-aged students is
wired literally and figuratively for instant communication. They text one another
even if they are in the same room. If I call or e-mail my grandchildren, they rarely
respond. But text them and “bingo, I get an immediate response. They are not good
at sitting passively and listening to others communicate. Again, I’m not aware of
serious research that confirms this fact but I sense that the large lecture format may
not be as effective for the current generation of students as classroom models that
require active engagement.
Now, I must stress that I do not believe that—in and of itself—technology represents
some sort of “magic bullet” to fix all the ills in undergraduate math instruction . . . on
in ANY instruction for that matter.
And I am certainly not suggesting that higher education cast aside every aspect of the
traditional approach and start anew. That would be an enormous mistake.
At the same time, I think we have an obligation to determine if the thoughtful and
strategic use of technology in higher education has potential to improve outcomes
while moderating rising costs. What I’m suggesting is the exploration of technology
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as a tool, not a cure-all; an enhancement to instruction, not a replacement for
instruction.
In other words, can the use of sophisticated technology and software enable us to
modify instructional strategies, engage students more effectively and improve their
performance? I think that is a question we must answer in a thoughtful and careful
manner. There is, I think we can all agree, a lot of hype out there about the use of
technology and online education. And there are plenty of examples of where
institutions have bought into the assumption that technology is the answer without
evidence that this is actually the case. My sense is that we need to enter this brave
new world with our minds open to the potential of highly interactive technology
enhanced instruction but we need to insist on evidence that learning is improved
before we adopt these strategies on a wide scale basis.
Having offered my broad perspective on this issue, I’d like to turn and share some of
my own experiences and how my thinking has evolved on the use of technology
enhanced teaching and learning strategies. Regrettably, most of my observations
involve non-mathematics courses but there are a few relevant math examples and I
think there is something math can learn from the successes I’ll mention from other
disciplines.
Let me start by noting that for 25 years, I regularly taught math courses…from large
lectures to advanced graduates classes. I’m ashamed to say that over that time I
never really asked myself if my basic approach to classroom instruction was the best
it could be. I just taught the way I was taught, which was pretty much the way
everyone else in the department taught. I felt like I was actually good with the large
lecture paradigm but, I have to say, that by the end of 50 minutes, I had no idea how
many students were still paying attention to what I was saying. I’ll try and avoid that
problem with this audience by talking “at you” for a lot less than 50 minutes.
My first exposure to rethinking the actual classroom dynamics came while I was
president of Ohio State University, through a research project in which the university
was a participant.
You are all probably familiar with the so-called Academic Transformation movement
lead by Carol Twigg. Carol’s thesis was, and still is, that there is a better way to teach
large lecture general education courses than the traditional lecture/recitation,
basically by using active learning, technology enhanced tutorials with immediate
feedback to students, and fewer formal lectures. With grant funding from the Sloan
Foundation, I believe, she set out to test her hypothesis. She engaged some 30
campuses across the nation ranging from community colleges, to small liberal arts
institutions, to major research universities. Participating institutions had to teach
some sections of a given course in the traditional manner and others using her
redesign model. Students in all sections had to take the same final and the results
would be compared. Ohio State participated in the experiment using its Stat 101
course. The results were quite dramatic…in all 30 cases, students from the
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redesigned sections did at least as well, and better almost all cases. Moreover, once
the technology costs were covered, the cost of course delivery was lower for the
redesigned sections. I was very impressed. So, when I went back to the University
System of Maryland we began to experiment with course redesign. One of our first
success stories was a redesign of Chem 101 at the university of Maryland Eastern
Shore, one of our 3 HBUs. This course had a very high failure rate...60% D’s and F’s.
After redesign, and after carefully running pilots to compare results and insure the
rigor of the course did not decline, the grades inverted…60% Cs and above. To date
we have done some 40 course redesigns across the system enrolling more than
14,000 students this past semester.
Our interest in exploring and testing technology enhanced course delivery has by
now gone well beyond Carol Twigg’s course redesign strategies, however. For
example, we have developed a partnership with Carnegie Mellon and its Open
Learning Initiative. I suspect you are all familiar with OLI. Drawing upon the
expertise of CMU’s cognitive science faculty, and disciplinary experts, OLI has
developed courses that draw heavily on computer enhanced learning modules and
online tutorials—with intelligent tutors built into the software. Two of our
institutions, UMBC and Towson University were involved in an experiment run by
Ithaka, the Manhattan-based not-for-profit dedicated to advancing higher education
through the use of IT. As many of you probably know, Ithaka founded J-Stor, the
online journal repository. In the Fall of 2011 and the Spring of 2012, UMBC and
Towson were among six public universities in Maryland and New York that took part
in an important Ithaka/OLI study, using OLI’s introductory statistics course. Students
at each institution were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group took the
traditional classroom-based course; the other took the OLI computer-assisted course.
As with our course redesign experiments, the students took the same final exam. In
every case, the students in the OLI sections did as well as those in the traditional
sections and at lower cost for course delivery because these sections had fewer
formal classroom sessions.
Just about all the professors that went into the study did so with some skepticism.
But at the end, most acknowledged a much more positive outlook for the redesigned
courses combining online and in-person education. One advantage commonly noted
by the instructors was the timely feedback the software gave by tracking students'
answers to questions posed as they worked through each lesson. This shed light
directly on the questions—and concepts—posing problems. In effect, the faculty
knew exactly where the students were having trouble in “real time,” as opposed to
the traditional sections where precise information about student difficulties only
came after one of the periodic semester exams. A Towson professor involved in the
experiment noted that her students had come away with a "deeper understanding"
than she had seen in conventional courses. Both UMBC and Towson now teach Stat
101 using the OLI modules.
Another area of innovation much in the news today is the Massively Open Online
Courses offered by Coursera, Udacity, and edX. While lots of issues have been raised
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about MOOCs, including low course completion rates, I believe there is genuine
potential in MOOCs. I have no doubt that over time their quality and their supporting
instructional platforms will continuously improve. We have to remember that what
we have today are MOOCs 1.0. Even so they already utilize cognitive science in their
development and they are adept at supporting so-called learning analytics. In
keeping with our determination to test teaching and learning innovations, USM is
involved in a study involving MOOCS. In partnership with Coursera and Ithaka and
with a $1.4 million Gates Foundation grant—we are engaged in a project exploring
how presentation of material via a Coursera course can be used on a traditional
campus.
We have close to 20 side by side comparison running at institutions across the system
with some sections using Coursera MOOCs in the so-called “flipped classroom” model
and the other sections being taught in the traditional way. The results of this
experiment will be known this coming summer. One of the courses involved in this
experiment is pre-calculus at Towson University. This actually involves a three-way
comparison. Some students will be taking the traditional, face-to-face class; others
will be in a hybrid class using a MOOC made available through Coursera combined
with in-class activity; still others will take a redesigned course augmented by the
Pearson Math Lab.
Course redesign, OLI, and the repurposing of MOOCs all represent what is sometimes
referred to as a “third way” or “flipped classroom” approach. This technique
combines the benefits of “first way” traditional, on-campus, in-person classes with the
advantages of “second way” online technology. From my perspective—and from
USM’s experience—this may hold the most promise of new pedagogical approaches.
UMBC has been especially engaged in this “flipped” approach. The institution is well
along the path to transforming its entire lower division science and mathematics
curriculum to an inquiry-based, active learning, technology enhanced classroom
format. They began this effort with the chemistry curriculum and the results are
quite impressive. In Chem 101, for example, drop out rates were reduced by 60% and
percentage of students earning Ds and Fs was cut in half. The transformation for the
physics, biology and mathematics lower division curriculum to this model is now
underway.
Another USM comprehensive institution, Frostburg State University, recently made a
major change to its Developmental Math course. This course has an interesting
history. It began with student services offering math tutoring. Over time, it
transformed into a full-blown non-credit, developmental class. But the course was a
failure…low pass rates, spotty student performance in subsequent courses, and an
achievement gap between male and female students, with the failure rate for male
students significantly higher.
In 2011, FSU initiated a course redesign effort using the emporium model, replacing
stand-alone lectures with a learning resource center featuring interactive computer
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software and on-demand personalized assistance. After some tweaks the redesign
students were found to have performed significantly better than students in the
traditional sections. The advantages this platform provided—hands-on learning, selfpaced progress, immediate feedback, targeted assistance, individualized review—
drove the failure rate down to from over 50% to below 20% percent with no gender
differences.
Let me conclude my remarks with an important issue we have faced…how have we
gone about getting faculty engaged in these innovation efforts. To date we have some
200 faculty actively involved. First and foremost, this has not been a top down
mandate. We all know that would fail.
From the start, we realized that these innovations are hard work and require serious
efforts. After all, we are asking faculty to think about a new paradigm for instruction.
We have adopted a two-pronged approach.
We have provided faculty with release time to devote to course redesign and
departments with incentive funds. We have set standards for what a transformation
must include…active learning, technology enhanced support, side by side
comparisons so we can measure learning gains or losses and cost of delivery.
Secondly, we provide workshops and mentors for faculty entering this activity. By
now, we have a cadre of “experts” on these new teaching and learning strategies,
which we designate as Faculty Teaching Innovation Fellows. The Fellows hold
workshops and provide support throughout the pilot phase for faculty starting new
projects.
At this point, I’ll end my comments and see if anything I’ve said has triggered
thoughts or questions from you. As I do, I just want to emphasize a point I made at
the beginning of my remarks. I feel strongly that we in higher education have an
obligation to determine if new technology, new teaching and learning strategies
informed by cognitive science can improve student success and address rising costs.
But we must do so in a thoughtful and careful way. We need evidence that course
transformations actually work before we implement them on a broad scale basis.
Some ideas and efforts will work, and we have evidence to support that. When they
work, if they are cost effective, we have an obligation to embrace them. Some will fail
and we have evidence of that as well. Failures, must of course, be abandoned.
So let me stop and throw the floor open to any comments, questions or observations
you may have.