Projects
Assessing, Understanding, and Improving the Transfer of Learning in Undergraduate Math, Science, and Engineering: NSF Grant (6.02 - 6.06)
While numerous studies have focused on improving learning outcomes within particular math, science and engineering courses, comparatively little attention has been paid to assessing and improving the transfer of learning between courses. In this study, by developing diagnostic exams that measure conceptual understanding and the ability to transfer that understanding to subsequent courses, we assess the transfer of learning between basic math and physics courses and higher-level engineering courses. This is the first step towards our long-term objective of significantly improving the transfer of learning within and between courses in undergraduate math, science and engineering. To realize these goals we address the following questions:
- To what extent are students able to transfer concepts, knowledge, and skills learned in introductory Calculus, Differential Equations and Physics to subsequent engineering courses?
- Do students receiving better grades and higher diagnostic scores exhibit higher levels of transfer?
- To what extent do instructors incorporate transfer enhancing techniques in their teaching?
- Do engineering students have an integrated concept of their curriculum and course of study? Do they feel prepared and motivated to transfer what they have learned?
To answer these questions, a team of Rensselaer mathematicians, engineers, physicists, cognitive scientists and assessment specialists is conducting a four-year research project. The project is coordinated by the director and staff of RPI's Center for Innovation in Undergraduate Education, in collaboration with the Physics Education Research Group at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Project activities focus on:
- Developing diagnostic exams for Calculus I, Calculus II, and Differential Equations that measure conceptual understanding in areas critical for two widely taught courses, Engineering Dynamics and Fields & Waves.
- Developing diagnostic exams that measure transfer from Calculus, Differential Equations and Physics into Engineering Dynamics and Fields & Waves.
- Creating a Transfer Environment and Student Readiness Instrument that will assess a range of environmental and affective variables known to correlate with transfer capabilities.
- Constructing and implementing protocols for evaluating teaching styles in introductory math and physics with regard to the use of transfer-enhancing techniques and activities.
We expect the products emerging from this project to influence measuring undergraduate achievement nationwide. Our focused diagnostic exams for Calculus and Differential Equations will be important advances in the creation of complete diagnostics in these critical areas. Future widespread availability of such exams will improve our ability to discriminate between innovations that improve learning in these subjects and those that do not. The transfer diagnostics resulting from this project will allow universities across the country to assess, understand and improve transfer - an area which many educators now believe is the most important issue in teaching and learning in the 21st century.
New Pedagogical Methods to Address Diverse Learning Styles: GE Foundation Grant
There is considerable evidence that restructuring teaching to deal with different learning styles has a positive effect on student learning.
The first step in redesigning teaching to play to how students learn is the robust assessment of learning styles. From the many instruments developed over the past three decades, we have chosen the particularly reliable, valid and efficient Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI). The LSI categorizes learning styles with regard to an individuals preference for: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, or active experimentation.
Recent research also guides our creation of customized content and new learning experiences that span the range of learning styles of students in Thermal Fluids Engineering I (TFEI). Active learning exercises that demand different learning and problem-solving strategies will be developed to engage all of the different learning styles defined by the LSI. By providing students with learning experiences more closely aligned with their cognitive strengths, as well as activities that broaden and extend their learning strategies, we aim to significantly improve learning outcomes in comparison to the traditional studio version of TFEI. After two years, we expect to double learning gains and problem solving abilities (as measured by diagnostic exams), increase average student performance by 10-20% (as measured by total points accumulated on tests and projects), and improve levels of student satisfaction by at least 10% (as measured by questionnaires and focus groups).
The Kolb Learning Styles Inventory was given to students in Professor Deborah Kaminski's and Professor Richard Smith's sections of TFEI in spring 2001. The results were virtually identical in each section.
As expected, the most common learning styles in both classes were Convergers and Assimilators (75-80%). The minority learning styles were Accomodators and Divergers (20-25%).
The minority learning styles steadily performed a full grade level below students with the majority learning styles. This finding drives the development of new learning materials that target the less prevalent student learning styles. For example, Professor Kaminski has devised new methods for teaching problem-solving. She is also developing demonstrations and online materials that address areas where students have exhibited conceptual weaknesses and enhance the graphics and visuals used in the course. Working with the CIUE, Prof Kaminski has also created a series of problem-solving sessions in streaming video format. Her video clips use different pedagogical strategies and materials that are designed to appeal to those students exhibiting minority learning styles. Diagnostic exams will be utilized in the Fall of 2002 to ascertain the impact of the new materials.
Web-based Introduction to Differential Equations: Sloan Foundation Grant
Under a CIUE grant from the Sloan Foundation, Rensselaer faculty created five web-enhanced courses: Studio Ecology (Lister), C++ (Ingalls), Physics 1 (Cummings), Chemistry of Materials (Apple), and Differential Equations (Siegmann). All of these courses were previously taught in studio style. Of the five, Introduction to Differential Equations seemed particularly suitable for production in a fully web-based format.
The face-to-face studio version of Differential Equations, developed by William Siegmann, Professor of Mathematics at Rensselaer, is taught in two sessions per week, each session lasting one hour and fifty minutes. Class size ranges from 30 to 50 students.
Each class period follows the classic studio structure. The instructor begins by reviewing homework and encouraging questions about any problems the students might be having with the course material. As is generally the case in studio courses, lectures are short, and the instructor follows the introductory question and answer session with a brief (5-10 minute) mini-lecture that develops an important concept and/or technique. The students then collaborate in hands-on exercises that develop their understanding of the topic under consideration. These exercises require the students to solve problems using pencil and paper or mathematics software on their laptops (Maple). While students are working on their own, the instructor and teaching assistant move around the classroom answering questions and helping the students reach solutions. Once students finish the hands-on exercise, the instructor reviews the hands-on exercise with the class, clears up any remaining questions, and then moves on to the next topic, repeating the sequence of mini-lecture, problem-solving session, and summary.
To produce the asynchronous portion of Web-based Differential Equations, the CIUE recorded all of the mini-lectures given by Professor Siegmann in digital video. Following the in-class tapings, each mini-lecture was captured, encoded, and placed on the course web site in groupings that corresponded to the 25 class sessions. The hands-on exercises associated with each mini-lecture were also placed on the course web site along with Dr. Siegmann's reviews of the solutions to the exercises. Thus, working through a class-by-class matrix, the student taking the web-based version experiences the same pedagogical materials but lacks the assistance available from the instructor and TA in the face-to-face studio class. To help address this shortcoming, subsequent refinement of the course enhanced the matrix with seventy-one videos of Dr. David Schmidt solving problems selected from the course text that are appropriate to each segment of each class.
Web-based "diff-EQ" was offered as a pilot in the fall 1999 semester. The course transferred remarkably well to the Web environment and the enabling technologies proved to be robust and educationally effective. Web-based Introduction to Differential Equations is now offered on a regular basis and is taken each semester by 40-50 students. Ongoing comparisons of performance in Dr. Siegmann's regular face-to-face classes with those taught by his virtual persona on the web, indicate that the web students consistently do as well or better than the regular studio students. The success of this ground-breaking course, together with many of the innovations in the web-based portions of Studio Ecology and Engineering Graphics and CAD, formed the foundation of the CIUE's Next Generation Studio initiative (See next article).
A "Next Generation Studio" Course in Computer Science: AT&T Grant
Although studio teaching has been most successful, Rensselaer has continued to update and improve the original model. Recently, three major changes in our technological environment have opened up new possibilities for creating a "Next Generation Studio" model:
- All students are now required to own a high performance laptop computer.
- There has been an explosion in the use of course web sites with a consequent increase in the availability of a rich array of online educational content.
- With the completion of the new student union, Rensselaer students have access to wireless networks - a real step towards a truly immersive, anywhere-anytime-learning environment.
Enabled by these technologies, the "Next Generation Studio" will extend the benefits of interactive learning beyond classroom walls, create a more connected learning experience, integrate formative assessment into the curriculum, and further augment the effectiveness of studio classes. A central strength of the "Next Generation Studio" model lies in its synthesis of synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences. Through the online deployment of streaming video, interactive exercises, and electronic office hours, "virtual studio" classrooms will be available to students 24/7. Properly crafted, we believe that activity-based learning via virtual studio web sites can complement and greatly extend learning in face-to-face classes. Given the success of our first Next Generation Studio course, Web-based Differential Equations, we are working with instructors in several other courses to implement similar technologies, formats, and course designs. These include Engineering Graphics and CAD, Thermal and Fluids Engineering, Signals and Systems, the Calculus Video Tutor, Molecular Biology, and Studio Ecology. We will leverage all of the technical and pedagogical experience accrued from these pilot projects, plus some new improvements, in the production of Computer Science I.
For many years, CSI was taught as a large lecture course with a weekly laboratory for smaller groups of students. However, as a result of the new Bachelor of Science degree program in Information Technology, special sections of the course were recently taught using a "studio" model in which lectures were immediately followed by in-class, small group, programming exercises that reinforce the lecture material. Both students and instructors preferred this approach. Nevertheless, the "studio" approach is impossible to use for the entire CSI course because there are as many as 500 students a semester who take the course and only one instructor available to teach it.
With support from the AT&T Foundation, we are creating a web-based Next Generation Studio version of CSI. The use of asynchronous, web-based instruction in CSI and other beginning computer science courses potentially frees significant faculty time for teaching more advanced courses. Exploiting asynchronous, web-based instruction for CSI has other benefits as well. Example problems and programs as well as studio exercises can be better tailored to a student's major discipline. Similarly, the breadth of students taking the course (ranging from students with a lot of experience and going for the "easy A", to those having a lot of trouble) can be better addressed. Better real-time assessment of a student's progress is also feasible, allowing a more tailored presentation of the material.
A New Model for a Self-Taught Solid Modeling Course: RPI Curriculum Innovation Grant to D. Baxter
Rensselaer engineering students have the opportunity to use solid modeling in their sophomore and senior design projects as well as some special topic electives. Not surprisingly, all engineering students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are required to take a one credit course in solid modeling. This course, Engineering Graphics and Computer Aided Design (EG&CAD), teaches the use of a solid modeling system to create parts, small assemblies, and documentation. Perhaps more importantly, EG&CAD also emphasizes the use of vectors in creating solid models and thereby provides students reinforcement of their linear algebra knowledge.
Finding the teaching staff to run EG&CAD for 750-800 students/year has always been a challenge. With 15-20 sections per semester, concerns about equality of instruction and evaluation among the sections always exist. In addition, the course requires one hour of lecture and two hours of laboratory each week making it difficult to fit in with two hour class schedules. To help overcome these concerns, the course has been redesigned as a "Next Generation Studio" course with WebCT-controlled/CD-distributed video lectures and hands-on exercises that students engage prior to their face-to-face laboratory session. By combining the power and flexibility of online learning with the known benefits of in-class studio, the load on teaching staff, classroom space and other campus resources has been very much reduced and student performance (measured by quality of final projects and numbers of Ws, Ds, and Fs) has gone up significantly.
Online Problem Solution for Signals & Systems: RPI Curriculum Innovation Grant to M. Wozny, A. Desrochers
Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE) majors must take Signals & Systems (ECSE 2410) usually in the spring semester of their third year at Rensselaer. Electric Circuits (ECSE 2010) is the course's one prerequisite that, itself, carries prerequisites in math, physics, and engineering. The comprehensive nature of the course leads both students and instructors to find the course challenging. Topics covered include:
- Time- and frequency-domain representation of continuous-and discrete-time
- Signals and systems, and solutions of their response
- Simulation of linear systems
- Fourier series and transform
- Laplace transform and z-transform.
- Stability feedback systems, and root-locus analysis and design.
- Application involving communication and control systems.
Digital videos shot by the CIUE and placed on the course web site for 24/7 access have enhanced students' learning experience in the course by revisiting troublesome areas and facilitating greater exposure to expert problem-solving strategies employed by Professors Michael Wozny and Alan Desrochers. Students report that their ability to control the pacing and repetition of the online videos makes a big difference in their understanding of the material.
Recent
Pre-College Initiative
Throughout the 1990s, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute made a full-scale, campus-wide effort to revolutionize undergraduate education, while simultaneously meeting significant fiscal challenges. The next step was to take this knowledge and transfer it and the expertise that Rensselaer has developed to the K-12 educational environment. The CIUE and the Center for Initiatives in Post-Secondary Education (CIPSE) worked together under a grant from the AT&T Foundation for Rensselaer's Pre-College Initiative Program to accomplish this goal. The program's objectives were to:
- Help families, schools and communities understand how to use technology by educating teachers in classroom use of new technologies and interactive learning, and producing a cadre of teachers who can be change agents and mentors in their respective school districts;
- Ensure maximum curriculum options for high school students, despite shrinking budgets and lack of qualified teachers, by delivering college-level, educational experiences to students using our new technologies and pedagogies;
- Transfer the knowledge and expertise that Rensselaer has developed in student-centered learning environments in order to create a "virtual studio classroom" at a distance that will enhance learning and serve as a national model both for university/school collaborations, and for future distance learning efforts of all kinds;
- Increase the pool of qualified students for Rensselaer and other universities, while developing alternate income. Rensselaer promoted this initiative as a national model both for university/K-12 collaborations, and for future distance learning efforts of all kinds.
C U P L E
The CIUE was the primary center responsible for bringing the Comprehensive Unified Physics Learning Environment (CUPLE) to fruition. CUPLE is based on the conviction that students and faculty benefit from sophisticated materials that are comprehensive in their approach to the various aspects of physics education; that are unified in their ability to work together and exchange data; and that present nearly the same user interface for all materials.
Increasingly, university physics departments use personal computers as part of introductory physics courses. A key reason for this trend is the PC's ability to help students understand various representations of physical phenomena. The leap from representation to representation is a feat of mental athletics that is daunting to most students yet absolutely critical to the conceptual understanding of the phenomenon. CUPLE allows the student to view the many different representations and all at the same time.
The Virtual Studio Classroom
The Anderson CIUE worked together with Northeastern University's distance learning branch, Network Northeastern, and Rensserlaer Satellite Video Program (RSVP) to combine traditional satellite broadcasts with Web-based interactive learning to teach a course on interactive multimedia. The course involved two satellite broadcasts. The first provided an introduction to the course design, the technology and software, and to the basic material covered during the first week. The second broadcast reviewed the first week's progress and introduced the following week's material. Following each broadcast, students were required to complete a set of hands-on exercises using software running on a Citrix server. Once they are logged in, the students became clients on this server which means that the multimedia authoring software was actually running on the server not on the remote machines. The server simply sent screen updates to each remote computer. This allowed the students to use virtually any kind of PC and any Internet connection, even modems, and still run course related software as if it were on their own machines. Interaction with the instructor was both synchronous and asynchronous. Real time interaction and Web-based tutoring utilized LearnLinc's INet product.
Virtual Studio Ecology
The CIUE helped redesign the pre-existing Principles of Ecology course into a new 4 credit Virtual Studio Ecology course that has been taught since fall 1997. Studio Ecology employs four interconnected sets of computer exercises:
- Computer labs based on EcoBeaker, a set of programs for the simulation and analysis of major concepts in Ecology published by Sinauer.
- Computer analysis of data sets from actual ecological studies that complement the EcoBeaker labs and allow students to test hypotheses and empirically discover ecological principles for themselves.
- Multimedia modules that extend and amplify the basic EcoBeaker labs.
- Virtual field trips to selected habitats utilizing Apple QuickTime VR.
Besides resting on a foundation of interactive learning, Studio Ecology also advanced two principles critical to the evolution of the studio model:
- All resources from basic class assignments to multimedia modules and virtual labs are available on the Web and accessible to students 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- A formative evaluation model was employed through biweekly online assessments of student learning and satisfaction.
The results of these assessments have guided subsequent development of the course
Pilot Studio Courses
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation played an integral part in supporting the development of studio courses and interactive learning at Rensselaer. The support from the Foundation increased the interschool initiative to create interactive coursework to prepare students for life and work.
Beginning in the fall of 1997, the CIUE in collaboration with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences will began development of four new multidisciplinary studio courses. The pilot courses were designed to increase the interactive learning atmosphere at Rensselaer for freshmen and sophomores. These interactive courses concentrate on issues concerning the interactions between human populations and the material world they inhabit. The courses are:
- Media and Popular Culture; developed by June Deery
- Economic, Ecology, and Ethics; developed by Sabine O'Hara
- Communication, Leadership and Technology; developed by Tim Stephen
- Culture and Cognition; developed by Linnda Caporael
