Executive Summary of Results

A course Web site provides images, primary sources, and background materials on the history of the future and Web-based assignments leading students through basic reasoning skills. Students’ learning is assessed through comparison of their responses to Web assignments over the semester to be augmented in the fall by pre- and post-tests. By the end of the fall semester the course will have been offered twice as a seminar and once as a large “lecture” course. I have presented this work at conferences in Indianapolis, the University of Illinois, and Oxford Universities.

Need for the Project

There is a wide-spread belief among IUB faculty that many of our first-year students are ill-prepared for the tasks they face in our courses. In order to overcome obstacles to learning in my own classes and to create a model that might be useful to others, I developed a four part strategy for helping students succeed. First, I defined the kind of mental operations that students had to master to get past the bottlenecks to learning that have been visible in the past. I then modeled these operations, gave students an opportunity to practice them and to receive feedback, and assessed their success over time. In the process I employed the “Just-in-Time Teaching Strategies”developed by Gregor Novak and his collaborators to provide opportunities for practice, feedback, and assessment and the extensive use of collaborative and active learning activities.

Use of Technology

I used the course Web site to create a unified and structured learning experience. Each week the Web assignments helped structure students’ study time, provided regular feedback on their mastery of basic skills and concepts, and gave them an extra incentive to come to class prepared to play an active role in the teams. I received their assignments electronically, several hours before class on Thursday, and I was able to restructure the lesson plan response to their success or failure on these assignments. The other elements of the Web site immersed them in images and texts from the period being studied, let them know which issues to focus on, gave them background information on the readings and suggestions about how to approach some of the more difficult texts, provided an overview of what we would be doing in class each day, modeled basic learning tasks, and helped motivate them to become more involved in the course. (Hopefully, I managed to commandeer some of the time they would have spent cruising the Web anyway.)

This represented a new expansion of the paradigm of “Just in Time Teaching” into the humanities, and an exploration of new ways to help students comprehend the world of different historical eras by immersion in a world of images and original texts. I also used the material on the Web, particularly the online assignments, to support the work of teams in class.

Instructional Design Plan

Describe how the use of technology used supported your teaching approach:

• What student learning outcomes were expected?
• How did your teaching plan encourage active learning, provide feedback, address respective learning styles, and build collaboration?
• What resources were used? (campus technology support services, etc.)
• Would your project be easily understood and executed by other faculty?

I expected these changes to increase student time on task, to focus their studying on the issues most relevant to the course, to cause students to come to class better prepared to make a positive contribution to the work of their teams, and to help more students master the basic operations required for success in the course. Technology aided me in achieving each of these goals. I also moved material that had previously been covered in lecture to the Web, thereby freeing up more class time for collaborative and active learning activities. I received wonderful technical support from TLTL, and the graduate assistant and the equipment provided by the grant were very important. The basic principles upon which this project rests should be readily transferable to a great variety of different courses.

Potential to Impact Student Learning

Clearly define how your project improved student learning - include specific examples of how your project:

• Fostered depth of learning
• Supported efforts to improve retention
• Fostered the learning of large numbers of students
• Has broader applications that will affect learning K-12 or community environments?

Last fall I taught a version of the course as a freshman seminar in order to be able to observe at close hand students’ experience of the Web site. I will repeat this process as part of the Intensive Freshman Seminar Program in August and then I will teach it as a large “lecture” course in the fall. I have already observed the way that the Web site can increase the speed at which students master the operations of the course and give them clear feedback. The students were better prepared for discussion, active learning exercises, and group work, and I was able to lead them into discussion of more demanding material without losing a good part of the class. Less time has been wasted in going over issues that a good part of the class already understood. The electronic assignments gave me a much clearer picture of what the students had or had not mastered at every stage of the course, and I could track the progress o individual students across the semester.

Based on the pedagogical literature, it seems very likely that the combination of clear feedback, collaborative learning, and active learning exercises will increase retention. I think that this approach has major applications throughout the educational system, although it is labor-intensive, and that might create problems in transferring to some secondary school contexts.

Assessment Plan

Briefly explain the effectiveness of your assessment plan:

• What measure of assessment was used?
• How did your approach obtain measures of performance?
• Did you feel your measurement was accurate and effective?

The weekly assignments have provided a means of assessing student learning that is integral to the course itself. Since they are organized around specific learning tasks, I have a clear image of what they can and cannot do at every stage. Since the same skills are measured several times across the course, I have a good idea how much they have retained – at least across the semester. In the next several months I want to fine tune the assignments that I have used to be sure that they are retesting the same skills at appropriate intervals, and I want to finish work on a pre- and post-test of the students ability to perform the basic learning tasks that are at the core of this course.

Plan for Colleague Development

Describe your role and activities as a mentor:

• What mentoring activities were implemented to assist colleagues?
• How did you help to develop colleague's instructional technology skills?
• How do you think your contributions to the Knowledge Base will help colleagues planning similar projects?
• Is your project approach potentially applicable to other contexts or disciplines?
• What tips would you offer?

I presented the basic strategies underlying this course to 11 IUB faculty at the summer seminar of the Lilly Freshman Learning Program in Bloomington in May and to 14 faculty from IUB and several other institutions in Boston at the summer workshop of the MEDIC-B program, which is designed to help science faculty improve student learning. In October I presented a paper at a panel on “Just in Time Teaching in the Humanities: Using Web-Based Warm-up Exercises in the Humanities” at the annual meetings of the International Society for the Exploration of Teaching Alternatives in Indianapolis. I helped two of the Freshman Learning Project Fellows with their applications for this year’s Ameritech competition. In the spring I shared this work as the keynote speaker at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Annual Active Learning Retreat in February and at the annual Conference on Teaching and Learning History in April at Oxford University. A more complete presentation of this project will provide a model for the work that 16 Lilly Freshman Learning Project Fellows will undertake at a three-day seminar on campus in May. In the fall I also plan to make a presentation about the use of technology in this course in the IUB History Department lecture series.

Final Comments on Project Results

• Do you think you met the goals of your project?
• What, if anything,would you do differently?
• Did you have any unexpected outcomes? (positive or negative)
• Would you recommend this teaching approach to colleagues?
• What other comments or suggestions would you offer to complete this report?

At the risk of ending this report in an uninteresting fashion, I must state that this project has developed pretty much as expected and that I would generally follow the same steps were I to begin it again. I would heartily recommend this to colleagues, provided that they are able and willing to make the significant up-front commitment of time that it requires.

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Last updated: 18 May, 2007

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