Posters
PRE-CALC STUDENTS FROM DIGITAL ONLINE COURSES, PERFORMANCE ON CALCULUS COURSES AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL Morten Brekke, University of Agder, Norway E-Learning and computer technology has been an important part of my work as a teacher in engineering education at University of Agder for the past 15 years. Throughout this period the performance and results of my students have improved on my courses. Use of ICT in teaching is an ongoing process. The constant development of new applications and new versions of existing tools make it challenging to keep up as a teacher. But it also makes it very exciting. New applications and tools create new and different opportunities that you can use. With the selection of MyMathLab Global from Pearson Education, I found a tool that satisfied my requirements for digital assessments. In 2011 we started to “live stream” my lectures. My students saw new possibilities with the “live-streaming”. Students could see my lectures from home, in the cantina or wherever they are. But most important, they could see my lectures as repetition whenever they wanted to. They could go back and see difficult topics and problems again and again. So with the digital assessment in place and the “live streaming” up and running I saw an opportunity to develop online courses in Mathematics and Physics. We started up our first courses in Mathematics and Physic January 2013. Feedback and performance from students participating has been excellent so far. But to see how successful it has been we need to see how they performed on my MA-154 Calculus course at Campus. Even though it was only 7 students from the first full time online course of spring 2013 who attended MA-154, it clearly indicates whether the level of these students is good enough. This paper will explain how the online courses were conducted and how students performed online and on the campus course MA-154.
Innovation and relevance I was determined that there not should be any physical meetings on campus during courses. All tasks should be done online. Mandatory tests and exams should be done on their own computers at home. Flexibility and good feedback from teachers makes online students confident. At our University we use Fronter as the Learning Management System. This is my course classroom. Here I give students study plans, weekly tasks and academic content. The most demanding and time-consuming work was to establish the video lectures. I wanted short lectures 5 to 15 minutes on each topic. The lectures in Mathematics were recorded using Camtasia in our own office. The lectures in Physics have now been recorded in our brand new studio. To set the grade in each course I ended up with 7 to 8 mandatory tests, one midterm exam and one final exam for the courses. Duration of tests was 3 hours and 5 hours on exams. On all tests and exams exercises were randomized and values algorithmic. This meant that no students could compare answers with another.
Conclusions Feedback shows that students from the online courses were very satisfied. During courses they experienced few technical problems, it was easy to access and feedback and support was excellent throughout. To be the first group of students from online courses attending our Bachelor program, I must say that the results are not too bad at all. They do not in any way differ much from our other students. Our online students in general seem to be hard working and conscientious. An interesting reflection is that there was considerable variation in how students work and that some still prefer the textbook and written notes, thankfully. Even though I am a major consumer of ICT in education, I am still a big fan of traditional teaching methods. The fact that some students have chosen to use the Wolfram website has done that I have changed how tests and exams appear. Use of this website will now not be such a big help anymore. I will continue to compare grades from the online course with grades from Mathematic courses at Bachelor programs. The online courses are continually being renewed and upgraded. That is one of the great advantages with online courses. Changes can be made immediately and it is very easy to change academic content. We are currently making new video lectures and do some remake of old lectures. In MyMathLab new and improved tasks and problems are replaced with old constantly. We get more and more experience and get better in every aspect of producing online courses.
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