When students can choose easy, medium, or hard homework problems

Teodorescu, Raluca; Seaton, Daniel T.; Cardamone, Caroline N.; Rayyan, Saif; Abbott, Jonathan E.; Barrantes, Analia; Pawl, Andrew; Pritchard, David E.; Rebello, N. Sanjay; Engelhardt, Paula V.; Singh, Chandralekha

doi:10.1063/1.3679999

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The 8.MReV course grew from MIT's highly successful oncampus short course that improves the expertise of the students' learning attitudes as measured by the CLASS [1], raises their grades from D to B in three weeks [12], and improves their performance in the subsequent course (Electricity and Magnetism) by over ½ grade [13]. Because the instructors had to interact intensively with students who were solving problems in class, the instructors made online wikis, then eText, and then multilevel homework [16]. This grew into a free open online course that was offered twice in 2012 using the LON-CAPA platform.…”

Section: Description Of 6002x -Circuits and Electronicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlating skill and improvement in 2 MOOCs with a student's time on tasks

Champaign

Colvin

Liu

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the First ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale Conference

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Because MOOCs offer complete logs of student activities for each student there is hope that it may be possible to find out which activities are the most useful for learning. We start this quest by examining correlations between time spent on specific course resources and various measures of student performance: score on assessments, skill as defined by Item Response Theory, improvement in skill over the period of the course, and conceptual improvement as measured by a prepost test. We study two MOOCs offered on edX.org by MIT faculty: Circuits and Electronics (6.002x) and Mechanics Review (8.MReV). Surprisingly, we find strong negative correlations in 6.002x between student skill and resource use; we attribute these findings to the fact that students with higher initial skills can do the exercises faster and with less time spent on instructional resources. We find weak or slightly negative correlations between relative improvement and resource use in 6.002x. The correlations with learning are stronger for conceptual knowledge in 8.MReV than with relative improvement, but similar for all course activities (except that eText checkpoint questions correlate more strongly with relative improvement). Clearly, the wide distribution of demographics and initial skill in MOOCs challenges us to isolate the habits of learning and resource use that correlate with learning for different students.

show abstract

Section: Description Of 6002x -Circuits and Electronicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlating skill and improvement in 2 MOOCs with a student's time on tasks

Champaign

Colvin

Liu

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the First ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale Conference

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Students are introduced to the MAPS pedagogy and are lead through various online activities [9,10,11]. Each of the above courses utilized LON-CAPA (http://www.loncapa.org) in providing weekly homework and an associated eText; both resources were easily navigable at each student's initial log-in.…”

Section: Courses and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Course Structure on eText Use in Large-Lecture Introductory-Physics Courses

Seaton¹,

Bergner²,

Kortemeyer³

et al. 2014

2013 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Course structure -the types and frequency of learning activities -impacts how students interact with electronic textbooks. We analyze student-tracking logs generated by the LON-CAPA learning management system from nearly a decade of blended large-lecture introductory-physics courses at Michigan State University, as well as one on-campus course from MIT. Data mining provides estimates of the overall amount and temporal regularity of eText use, i.e., weekly reading versus review immediately before exams. For all courses studied, we compare student use of eTexts as it varies with course structure, e.g., from traditional (three or four exams, eText assigned as supplementary) to reformed (frequent exams, embedded assessment in the assigned eText). Traditional format courses are accompanied by little eText use, while high reading levels persist throughout reformed courses.

show abstract

“…[23,43] The etext contains 255 HTML pages, and 40 other e-resources (videos, simulations, etc.). The text introduces the Modeling Applied to Problem Solving (MAPS) pedagogy, [44,45] which provides a framework for building expert-like problem solving skills.…”

Section: B Mit Relate Electronic Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Equally important is LON-CAPA's legacy over more than a decade of having delivered resources in over 7,700 blended and online courses to over 960,000 student course enrollments. Student activity records from LON-CAPA courses have provided in-depth insight into student problem-solving behavior, [17,22,23] but little work has been aimed at interactions with etexts.…”

Section: Introduction a Log Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing the impact of course structure on electronic textbook use in blended introductory physics courses

Seaton

Kortemeyer

Bergner

et al. 2014

American Journal of Physics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do elements of course structure (i.e., the frequency of assessments, as well as the sequencing and weight of course resources) influence the usage patterns of electronic textbooks (etexts) in introductory physics courses? We are analyzing the access logs of courses at Michigan State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which deployed etexts as primary or secondary texts in combination with different formative assessments (e.g., embedded reading questions) and different summative assessment (exam) schedules. As such studies are frequently marred by arguments over what constitutes a "meaningful" interaction with a particular page (usually judged by how long the page remains on the screen), we are considering a set of different definitions of "meaningful" interactions. We find that course structure has a strong influence on how much of the etexts students actually read, and when they do so: particularly courses that deviate strongly from traditional structures, most notably by more frequent exams, show consistently high usage of the materials with far less "cramming" before exams.

show abstract

When students can choose easy, medium, or hard homework problems

Cited by 11 publications

References 3 publications

Correlating skill and improvement in 2 MOOCs with a student's time on tasks

Correlating skill and improvement in 2 MOOCs with a student's time on tasks

The Impact of Course Structure on eText Use in Large-Lecture Introductory-Physics Courses

Analyzing the impact of course structure on electronic textbook use in blended introductory physics courses

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About