Transcript Document

LON-CAPA
An Overview
McMaster University
Gerd Kortemeyer
June 2007
Research Projects
• LearningOnline Network with CAPA (LON-CAPA)
 Resource Sharing
 Communities of Practice
 Sustainability
• Physics Education Research
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Some Old Results
Discussion analysis
Student attitudes, beliefs, and expectations
Curriculum development
NSF Project
• NSF Information Technology Research
• Investigation of a Model for Online
Resource Creation and Sharing
in Educational Settings
• September 2000 - August 2006
• $2.1M
• Model system: LON-CAPA
Resource Sharing
Sharing of Resources
• Creating online
resources (web pages,
images, homework
problems) is a lot of
work
• Doing so for use in just
one course is a waste
of time and effort
• Many resources could
be used among a
number of courses and
across institutions
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Key to Re-Usability
• The key to re-usability is to create coursecontext free resources
• In other words, same resource can be
used in different contexts
• This means:
 No button “next resource”
 No button “back to course menu”
 No wording such as “as we have previously
seen”
 etc
Using Re-Usable Resources
• BUT: how do you use context-free reusable resources in the context of a
course?
• You need an infrastructure to
 Find resources in
a library of resources
 Sequence them up
(put the puzzle together)
 Serve them out to
the students
LON-CAPA Architecture
Course Management
Campus A
Resource Assembly
Course Management
Campus B
Resource Assembly
Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library
LON-CAPA Architecture
Course Management
Campus A
Resource Assembly
Course Management
Campus B
Resource Assembly
Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library
Shared Resource Library
• LON-CAPA currently
links 106 institutions
in eight countries
Shared Resource Library
• The distributed
network looks like
one big file system
• You can see each
institution, the
authors at that
institution, and their
resources
Shared Resource Library
• Resources may be web
pages …
Shared Resource Library
• … or simulations and animations …
Shared Resource Library
• … or this kind of
randomizing
online problems
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Shared Resource Library
• …special emphasis on math
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Shared Resource Library
• … chemistry …
Shared Resource Library
• … physical units …
Shared Resource Library
• Dynamic Graphing
Shared Resource Library
• Total holdings and sharing
LON-CAPA Architecture
Course Management
Campus A
Resource Assembly
Course Management
Campus B
Resource Assembly
Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library
Resource Assembly
• Shopping Cart
“Supermarket”
Resource Assembly
• Nested Assemblies
• No pre-defined levels of
granularity („module“,
„chapter“, etc)
• People can never agree
what those terms mean
• Re-use possible on any
level
Resource Assembly
Writes module about
energy conservation
Writes module about
momentum
conservation
Compiles modules
about conservation
laws
Uses whole
assembly
in his course
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LON-CAPA Architecture
Course Management
Campus A
Resource Assembly
Course Management
Campus B
Resource Assembly
Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library
Course Management
• Instructors can
directly use the
assembled material
in their courses
 navigational tools for
students to access
the material
 grade book
 communications
 calendar/scheduling
 access rights
management
 portfolio space
Dynamic Metadata
Kursverwaltungssystem
Campus A
Inhalts
-zusammenstellungs
-werkzeuge
Kursverwaltungssystem
Campus B
Inhalts
-zusammenstellungs
-werkzeuge
Verteilte Inhaltsbibliothek
über Campusgrenzen hinaus
Dynamic Metadata
• Dynamic metadata from usage
• Assistance in resource selection („amazon.com“)
• Quality control
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Communities of Practice
User Institutions
• Increasing
number of
institutions
• Unexpected
growths at
K-12
schools
Conferences
• Annual user
Conferences
• 2007 Conference at
UIUC
• 2008 Conference at
SFU
• Several workshops
per year
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Teacher Initiative
• Initiative: THEDUMP („Teachers Helping Everyone
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•
Develop User Materials and Problems“)
Assembling materials that are appropriate for high
school use according to curricular units
Including university materials
Sharing Communities
• Online communities of practice
• Contributors versus users (institutions)
Sharing Communities
• Work done with FernUni Hagen using
LON-CAPA data set
• Data from
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253972 learning resources
539 authors
2275 courses
2120 course instructors
Sharing Communities
• Authors with the most contributions
Sharing Communities
• Actually used resources
• Normalized Contribution Popularity
Sharing Communities
• Co-Contribution Association
Sharing Communities
• Summary
Sustainability
Usage = Responsibility
• Graph shows student
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course enrollments at
MSU
Approximately
35,000
student/course
enrollments
systemwide
106 institutions
Some responsibility
to keep this going
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Sustainability
• LON-CAPA is open-source
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•
•
and free
No license fees
No income stream from that
But:
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Two support staff
One programmer
Hardware
User support
Training
Conferences
…
Sustainability
• Sustainability
 Commercial Spin-Off
 LON-CAPA Academic Consortium
Spin-Off
• eduCog, LLC
• Founded 2005
• Hosting LON-CAPA for
 2 Universities
 32 Schools
 6 Publishing
Companies
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Academic Consortium
• Founding members:
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Michigan State University
and University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
Associate Member: Simon
Fraser University
Total commitments of
$2.15M over the next five
years
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Some OLD Results - Still True
Time On Task
Prüfungs- und Kursnoten
Before and After
Gender Differential
phy231: without
CAPA
phy232: with CAPA
Gender differential
Seen in studies at
three other
universities
Discussion Analysis
Discussions
Problem
• A bug that has a mass
mb=4g walks from the
center to the edge of a
disk that is freely turning at
32rpm. The disk has a
mass of md=11g. If the
radius of the disk is
R=29cm, what is the new
rate of spinning in rpm?
Solution
• No external torque, angular momentum is
conserved
• Bug is small compared to disk, can be
seen as point mass
1
1
2
2 
2
2 
 md R  mb 0  0   md R  mb R 
2

2

md
 
0
md  2mb
Student Discussion
• Student A: What is that bug doing on a disk? Boo to physics.
• Student B: OHH YEAH
ok this should work it worked for me
Moments of inertia that are important....
OK first the Inertia of the particle is mr^2
and of a disk is .5mr^2
OK and angular momentum is conserved
IW=IWo W=2pi/T
then do this
.5(mass of disk)(radius)^2(2*pi/T original)+ (mass of bug)
(radius of bug=0)^2= (.5(mass of disk)(radius)^2(2pi/T))+
(mass of bug)(radius of bug)^2(2*pi/T)
and solve for T
Student Discussion (cont.)
• Student C: What is T exactly? And do I have to do anything to it to get the
final RPM?
• Student B: ok so T is the period... and apparently it works for some and
not others.... try to cancel out some of the things that are found on both
sides of the equation to get a better equation that has less numbers in it
• Student D: what did I do wrong?
This is what I did. initial inertia x initial angular velocity = final
inertia x final angular velocity. I=mr^2, angular velocity = w... so
my I initial was (10g)(24 cm^2) and w=28 rpm. The number
calculated was 161280 g *cm^2. Then I divided by final inertia to
solve for the final angular speed. I found final Inertia by
( 10g +2g)(24 cm^2)=6912. I then found the new angular speed to
be 23.3 rpm. This was wrong...what did I do incorrectly?
Student Discussion (cont.)
[…]
• Student H: :sigh: Wow. So, many, little things, can go wrong in
calculating this. Be careful.
[…]
• None of the students commented on
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Bug being point mass
Result being independent of radius
No unit conversions needed
Several wondered about the “radius of the bug”
Plug in numbers asap
Nobody just posted the symbolic answer
• Lots of unnecessary pain
Where Online Homework Fails
• Online homework can give both students and
•
faculty a false sense of security and
accomplishment
Most students got this problem correct
 … but at what cost?
 … how much physics have they really learned?
• This would not have remained undetected in hand•
•
graded homework
But copying is rampant in hand-graded homework
- do you really see the student’s work?
No human resources to grade weekly homework
for 200 students
… at the same time:
• If you want to know how students really go
about solving problems, this is the ideal tool:
 Every student has a different version, so the
discussion is not just an exchange of answers
 All discussions are automatically contextual
 Students transcribe their own discussion - compare
this to the cost of taping and transcribing verbal
discussions
 Discussions are genuine, since the students have a
genuine interest in solving the problems in the way
that they perceive to be the most efficient
Qualitative Research
• Analyze students’ understanding of a
certain concept
• Find student misconceptions
• Identify certain problem solving strategies
• Evaluate online resources
Quantitative Research
• Classify student discussion contributions
• Types:
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Emotional
Surface
Procedural
Conceptual
• Features:
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Unrelated
Solution-Oriented
Mathematical
Physics
Classifying Discussions
Discussions from three introductory physics courses:
Classifying the Problems
• Classifying the problems by question type
• Multiple Choice (incl. Multiple Response)
 highest percentage of solution-oriented discussions
(“that one is right”)
 least number of physics discussions
• Ranking and click-on-image problems
 Physics discussions highest
• Problems with representation-translation
(reading a graph, etc):
 slightly less procedural discussions
 more negative emotional discussion (complaints)
Degree of Difficulty
• Harder
than
0.6:
more
pain,
no gain
Good Students Discuss Better?
Correlations
• Force Concept Inventory (FCI)
• Pre- and Post-Test
Regression
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PostFCI=5,486+0,922•PreFCI+0,24 •PercentPhysics
PostFCI=7,606+0,857•PreFCI-0.042 •PercentSolution
Meaning what?
Students who contribute 100% solution-oriented
discussions on the average have 4.2 points (out of 30)
less on the post-test, controlling for pre-test
Attitudes, Expectations, and
Pre-Meds
Attitudes and Expectations
• Reactions to statements
Attitudes and Expectations
• LBS students versus engineering students (published data)
•
on survey clusters
Percentage favorable answers
Attitudes and Expectations
• So, while the premed course as a whole
had different attitudes and expectations
than the engineers:
• On an invididual level, do
 their discussion behavior
and their
 their performance measures
correlate with MPEX?
Attitudes and Expectations
Not really
Attitudes and Expectations
• Conclusion: Take the
Product Warning Label
seriously!
Curriculum Development
• It‘s hard to teach physics to pre-meds
• Need good grades but frequently do not
believe physics is relevant
• Survey on what would make physics
instruction more relevant
• 1=not at all; 3=neutral; 5=very
Curriculum Development
Curriculum Development
• Pending NSF CCLI with faculty from
Human Medicine and Medical Technology
Acknowledgements and Website
• Support provided by
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National Science Foundation
Michigan State University
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Our partner universities
Visit us at http://www.lon-capa.org/