IU SBC Fellows: Good Practices

Good Practice from John F. Kremer, IUPUI

Title	Students Offered Choice of Type of Computer Exercise for Assignments
Course or Project	B104 Introductory Psychology
Audience	Beginning undergraduates
Active	2001, still active
Background Information	Introductory Psychology at IUPUI is made up of students who have a very busy life and spend little time on campus. Students who are engaged in the class do well; but many students have life events (e.g., jobs, family responsibilities, emergencies) that get in the road of their academic career. The ABC rate (opposite of DWF) is just above 70%. The purpose of many of the innovations of this course is to help students deal with these obstacles and to increase the likelihood that they will chose course activities over other nonacademic alternatives.
Teaching Challenge	Within the first 4 weeks of the semester, we can predict who is not going to succeed in this course. The obvious predictors are coming to class and doing homework. If students come to less than 1/2 of the classes or complete less than 1/2 of the homework, they have a 70% probability of not passing the course. In addition, students (N=130) were asked what single factor about the instructor and about themselves could improve their performance in the course. Regarding the instructor, 41% stated that the instructor should not do anything different, 14% said that the instructor should spend more time reviewing the material, and no other factor had more than 5% of student agreement. On the students' part, 41% of students said that they should study more or be more productive when they study, 14% more specifically stated that they should improve their ability to concentrate, and 9% said they should use a repetitive study method like using flashcards.
Good Practice	The purpose of this good practice is to increase the probability that students will successfully complete the course by giving them homework assignments that they are more likely to complete and that will increase their understanding of the course material. Toward this objective, we have developed 5 very different computer exercises: flow charts, matching exercise, application of course concepts, 3 in a row, and essays. Each gives the students immediate feedback about their learning except the essays which have a 24 hour turnaround. Students are required to complete only 2 and may choose from among the 5 exercises. All exercises are available on the Internet.
Impact	(1) The exercises have a good motivational component. Most students enjoy the exercises. Students clearly have preferences in the exercises. Each exercise is the "best" one for some students. No one exercise has a universal appeal to the majority of the students. (2) Because the computer does the grading (except for essays which are graded by student assistants), faculty have less time invested. (3) Students get immediate feedback (4) Students are less likely to copy the homework from other students. (5) The criteria for grading is implemented uniformly and fairly across all students.
Assessment	(1) In twelve sections, 506 students were required to do the computer exercises as homework and, in addition, were required to complete the homework in order to gain access to the tests. For these twelve sections, the ABC rate was 78.9%, compared to 69.5%% in all other sections. (2) In comparison to other sections that used other types of homework, these twelve sections earned 2/3's of a letter grade higher on the first test in the course and had an overall GPA of 2.83 compared to 2.59 for all other sections.
Keywords	Motivating student participation, simulations, interactivity
Technical Format	Hybrid- Flash animation with interactivity, customized Web site

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