LON-CAPA and PER

LON-CAPA and PER

University of Maine

Gerd Kortemeyer

April 2007

Research Projects

• LearningOnline Network with CAPA (LON-CAPA) Resource Sharing Communities of Practice Sustainability

• Physics Education Research Some Old Results Discussion analysis Student attitudes, beliefs, and expectations Curriculum development

NSF Project

• NSF Information Technology Research

• Investigation of a Model for Online Resource Creation and Sharing inEducational Settings

• September 2000 - August 2006

• $2.1M

• Model system: LON-CAPA

Resource Sharing

Sharing of Resources

• Creating online resources (web pages, images, homework problems) is a lot of work

• Doing so for use in just one course is a waste of time and effort

• Many resources could be used among a number of courses and across institutions

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.



Key to Re-Usability• The key to re-usability is to create course-

context free resources• In other words, same resource can be

used in different contexts• This means:

No button “next resource” No button “back to course menu” No wording such as “as we have previously

seen” etc

Using Re-Usable Resources

• BUT: how do you use context-free re-usable resources in the context of a course?

• You need an infrastructure to Find resources in

a library of resources Sequence them up

(put the puzzle together) Serve them out to

the students

Campus A Campus B

LON-CAPA Architecture

Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library

Resource AssemblyResource Assembly

Course ManagementCourse Management



Campus A Campus B

Resource Assembly

Course Management

Resource Assembly

Course Management



Shared Resource Library

• LON-CAPA currently links 106 institutions in eight countries


• The distributed network looks like one big file system

• You can see each institution, the authors at that institution, and their resources


• Resources may be web pages …


• … or simulations and animations …

14

• … or this kind of randomizing online problems



• …special emphasis on math










• … chemistry …


• … physical units …

Shared Resource Library• Dynamic Graphing


• Total holdings and sharing

Available Used Used Externally

Images 88079 18262 9629

Problems 80009 57979 23816

Web Pages 57972 5888 2949

Reusable Content Assemblies

7405 3184 1299

Animations and Simulations 1575 507 338

Movies and Sound Files 742 326 105

Other (MS Office, etc) 11302 2484 674

Total 247084 88630 38810

Campus A Campus B




Course Management


Course Management

Resource Assembly

“Supermarket”

• Shopping Cart

Resource Assembly

• Nested Assemblies

• No pre-defined levels of granularity („module“, „chapter“, etc)

• People can never agree what those terms mean

• Re-use possible on any level

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Resource Assembly

Writes module aboutenergy conservation

Writes module aboutmomentumconservation

Compiles modules about conservation laws

Uses wholeassemblyin his course

Campus A Campus B



Resource Assembly


Resource Assembly


Course Management

• Instructors can directly use the assembled material in their courses navigational tools for

students to access the material

grade book communications calendar/scheduling access rights

management portfolio space

Campus A Campus B

Dynamic Metadata

Verteilte Inhaltsbibliotheküber Campusgrenzen hinaus

Inhalts-zusammenstellungs

-werkzeuge


-werkzeuge

KursverwaltungssystemKursverwaltungssystem


-werkzeuge


-werkzeuge

KursverwaltungssystemKursverwaltungssystem

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• Dynamic metadata from usage• Assistance in resource selection („amazon.com“)• Quality control

Dynamic Metadata

Communities of Practice

User Institutions

• Increasing number of institutions

• Unexpected growths at K-12 schools

Conferences

• Annual user Conferences

• 2007 Conference will be at UIUC

• 2008 Conference at SFU

• Several workshops per year





Teacher Initiative • Initiative: THEDUMP („Teachers Helping Everyone

Develop User Materials and Problems“)

• Assembling materials that are appropriate for high school use according to curricular units

• Including university materials

Sharing Communities• Online communities of practice

• Contributors versus users (institutions)

Sharing Communities• Work done with FernUni Hagen using

LON-CAPA data set

• Data from 253972 learning resources 539 authors 2275 courses 2120 course instructors

Sharing Communities

• Authors with the most contributions

Sharing Communities

• Actually used resources

• Normalized Contribution Popularity

Sharing Communities

• Co-Contribution Association

Sharing Communities

• Summary

Sustainability

Usage = Responsibility

• Graph shows student course enrollments at MSU

• Approximately 35,000 student/course enrollments systemwide

• 106 institutions

• Some responsibility to keep this going





Sustainability

• LON-CAPA is open-source and free

• No license fees• No income stream from that• But:

Two support staff One programmer Hardware User support Training Conferences …

Sustainability

• Sustainability Commercial Spin-Off LON-CAPA Academic Consortium

Spin-Off

• eduCog, LLC• Founded 2005• Hosting LON-CAPA for

2 Universities 32 Schools 6 Publishing

Companies





Academic Consortium

• Founding members: Michigan State University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Associate Member: Simon Fraser University

• Total commitments of $2.15M over the next five years









Some OLD Results - Still True

Time On Task

Prüfungs- und Kursnoten

Before and After

Gender Differential

phy231: without CAPA

phy232: with CAPA

Gender differential

Seen in studies at three other universities

Discussion Analysis

Discussions

Problem

• A bug that has a mass mb=4g walks from the center to the edge of a disk that is freely turning at 32rpm. The disk has a mass of md=11g. If the radius of the disk is R=29cm, what is the new rate of spinning in rpm?

Solution

• No external torque, angular momentum is conserved

• Bug is small compared to disk, can be seen as point mass

€

1

2mdR

2 + mb02 ⎛

⎝ ⎜

⎞

⎠ ⎟ω0 =

1

2mdR

2 + mbR2 ⎛

⎝ ⎜

⎞

⎠ ⎟ω

⇒ ω =md

md + 2mbω0

Student Discussion• Student A: What is that bug doing on a disk? Boo to physics.

• Student B: OHH YEAH

ok this should work it worked for me

Moments of inertia that are important....

OK first the Inertia of the particle is mr^2

and of a disk is .5mr^2

OK and angular momentum is conserved

IW=IWo W=2pi/T

then do this

.5(mass of disk)(radius)^2(2*pi/T original)+ (mass of bug)

(radius of bug=0)^2= (.5(mass of disk)(radius)^2(2pi/T))+

(mass of bug)(radius of bug)^2(2*pi/T)

and solve for T

Student Discussion (cont.)• Student C: What is T exactly? And do I have to do anything to it to get

the final RPM?

• Student B: ok so T is the period... and apparently it works for some and not others.... try to cancel out some of the things that are found on both sides of the equation to get a better equation that has less numbers in it

• Student D: what did I do wrong?

This is what I did. initial inertia x initial angular velocity = final

inertia x final angular velocity. I=mr^2, angular velocity = w... so

my I initial was (10g)(24 cm^2) and w=28 rpm. The number

calculated was 161280 g *cm^2. Then I divided by final inertia to

solve for the final angular speed. I found final Inertia by

( 10g +2g)(24 cm^2)=6912. I then found the new angular speed to

be 23.3 rpm. This was wrong...what did I do incorrectly?

Student Discussion (cont.)[…]

• Student H: :sigh: Wow. So, many, little things, can go wrong in calculating this. Be careful.

[…]

• None of the students commented on Bug being point mass Result being independent of radius No unit conversions needed Several wondered about the “radius of the bug” Plug in numbers asap Nobody just posted the symbolic answer

• Lots of unnecessary pain

Where Online Homework Fails• Online homework can give both students and

faculty a false sense of security and accomplishment

• Most students got this problem correct … but at what cost? … how much physics have they really learned?

• This would not have remained undetected in hand-graded homework

• But copying is rampant in hand-graded homework - do you really see the student’s work?

• No human resources to grade weekly homework for 200 students

… at the same time:

• If you want to know how students really go about solving problems, this is the ideal tool: Every student has a different version, so the

discussion is not just an exchange of answers All discussions are automatically contextual Students transcribe their own discussion - compare

this to the cost of taping and transcribing verbal discussions

Discussions are genuine, since the students have a genuine interest in solving the problems in the way that they perceive to be the most efficient

Qualitative Research

• Analyze students’ understanding of a certain concept

• Find student misconceptions

• Identify certain problem solving strategies

• Evaluate online resources

Quantitative Research• Classify student discussion contributions• Types:

Emotional Surface Procedural Conceptual

• Features: Unrelated Solution-Oriented Mathematical Physics

Classifying Discussions

Discussions from three introductory physics courses:

Classifying the Problems

• Classifying the problems by question type

• Multiple Choice (incl. Multiple Response) highest percentage of solution-oriented discussions

(“that one is right”) least number of physics discussions

• Ranking and click-on-image problems Physics discussions highest

• Problems with representation-translation (reading a graph, etc): slightly less procedural discussions more negative emotional discussion (complaints)

Degree of Difficulty

• Harder than 0.6: more pain, no gain

Good Students Discuss Better?

Correlations• Force Concept Inventory (FCI)• Pre- and Post-Test

Regression

• PostFCI=5,486+0,922•PreFCI+0,24 •PercentPhysics

• PostFCI=7,606+0,857•PreFCI-0.042 •PercentSolution

• Meaning what?

• Students who contribute 100% solution-oriented discussions on the average have 4.2 points (out of 30) less on the post-test, controlling for pre-test

Attitudes, Expectations, and Pre-Meds

Attitudes and Expectations• Reactions to statements

Attitudes and Expectations• LBS students versus engineering students (published data)

on survey clusters

• Percentage favorable answers

Curriculum Development

• It‘s hard to teach physics to pre-meds

• Need good grades but frequently do not believe physics is relevant

• Survey on what would make physics instruction more relevant

• 1=not at all; 3=neutral; 5=very



• Pending NSF CCLI with faculty from Human Medicine and Medical Technology

Acknowledgements and Website

• Support provided by National Science Foundation Michigan State University The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Our partner universities

Visit us at http://www.lon-capa.org/

Documents

LON-CAPA and PER