LON-CAPA and PER

1. LON-CAPA and PER University of Maine Gerd Kortemeyer April 2007

2. 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

3. NSF Project • NSF Information Technology Research • Investigation of a Model for Online Resource Creation and Sharing in
Educational Settings • September 2000 - August 2006 • $2.1M • Model system: LON-CAPA

4. Resource Sharing

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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 ina library of resources • Sequence them up(put the puzzle together) • Serve them out tothe students

8. Course Management Course Management Resource Assembly Resource Assembly Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library LON-CAPA Architecture Campus A Campus B

9. LON-CAPA Architecture Campus A Campus B Course Management Course Management Resource Assembly Resource Assembly Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library

10. Shared Resource Library • LON-CAPA currently links 106 institutions in eight countries

11. Shared Resource Library • The distributed network looks like one big file system • You can see each institution, the authors at that institution, and their resources

12. Shared Resource Library • Resources may be web pages …

13. Shared Resource Library • … or simulations and animations …

14. Shared Resource Library • … or this kind of randomizing online problems

15. Shared Resource Library • …special emphasis on math

16. Shared Resource Library • … chemistry …

17. Shared Resource Library • … physical units …

18. Shared Resource Library • Dynamic Graphing

19. Shared Resource Library • Total holdings and sharing

20. LON-CAPA Architecture Campus A Campus B Course Management Course Management Resource Assembly Resource Assembly Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library

21. Resource Assembly • Shopping Cart “Supermarket”

22. 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

23. Compiles modules about conservation laws Writes module aboutenergy conservation Uses wholeassemblyin his course Writes module aboutmomentumconservation Resource Assembly

24. LON-CAPA Architecture Campus A Campus B Course Management Course Management Resource Assembly Resource Assembly Shared Cross-Institutional Resource Library

25. 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

26. Kursverwaltungssystem Kursverwaltungssystem Inhalts -zusammenstellungs -werkzeuge Inhalts -zusammenstellungs -werkzeuge Verteilte Inhaltsbibliothek über Campusgrenzen hinaus Dynamic Metadata Campus A Campus B

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

28. Communities of Practice

29. User Institutions • Increasing number of institutions • Unexpected growths at K-12 schools

30. Conferences • Annual user Conferences • 2007 Conference will be at UIUC • 2008 Conference at SFU • Several workshops per year

31. 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

32. Sharing Communities • Online communities of practice • Contributors versus users (institutions)

33. Sharing Communities • Work done with FernUni Hagen using LON-CAPA data set • Data from • 253972 learning resources • 539 authors • 2275 courses • 2120 course instructors

34. Sharing Communities • Authors with the most contributions

35. Sharing Communities • Actually used resources • Normalized Contribution Popularity

36. Sharing Communities • Co-Contribution Association

37. Sharing Communities • Summary

38. Sustainability

39. Usage = Responsibility • Graph shows student course enrollments at MSU • Approximately 35,000 student/course enrollments systemwide • 106 institutions • Some responsibility to keep this going

40. 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 • …

41. Sustainability • Sustainability • Commercial Spin-Off • LON-CAPA Academic Consortium

42. Spin-Off • eduCog, LLC • Founded 2005 • Hosting LON-CAPA for • 2 Universities • 32 Schools • 6 Publishing Companies

43. 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

44. Some OLD Results - Still True

45. Time On Task

46. Prüfungs- und Kursnoten Before and After

47. Gender Differential phy231: without CAPA phy232: with CAPA Gender differential Seen in studies at three other universities

48. Discussion Analysis

49. Discussions

50. 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?