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CSULA Virtual Lab Project

CSULA Virtual Lab Project. CSU eAcademy Workshop for Proven Course Redesign Online Courses and Virtual Labs in Biology II 15-16 January 2014. What courses are being redesigned? BIOL 155 ─ Animal Biology (4) 10 week course with 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of laboratory per week

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CSULA Virtual Lab Project

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  1. CSULA Virtual Lab Project CSU eAcademy Workshop for Proven Course Redesign Online Courses and Virtual Labs in Biology II 15-16 January 2014

  2. What courses are being redesigned? • BIOL 155 ─ Animal Biology (4) • 10 week course with 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of laboratory per week • Satisfies GE Block B2 • Usually 192 students with 8 lab sections of 24 students each • Facility and labor intensive

  3. What does the course redesign involve? • Overview • Redesigning a GE biology laboratory course • Replace traditional labs with engaging inquiry-based exercises • Experiment with different modes of delivery • Two new modes of lab instruction vs. traditional (1) ALL labs online and (2) TWO tracks online & wet labs alternating every week • Use GAs for “drop-in help center” and grading

  4. Assessment (formative and summative) • Hired an assessment evaluator (Dr. Ji Son) • Pre- and post-course student surveys • Assess student attitudes (BioCLASS: Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey) • Knowledge: Natural Selection Concept Inventory (Anderson, Fisher, & Norman, 2002) • Performance individual activities and course grades • Comparison of different virtual lab products (Biology labs OnLine vs. Smart Science Labs)

  5. Online Labs • Ten weekly labs in each lab section will be offered online • Drop-In Help Center staffed by GAs • Hybrid Labs • Five weekly labs in each lab section will be offered online; the other five will be wet labs. • Eight of the 16 lab sections will start with wet labs and alternate with online labs. • The remaining eight sections will begin with online labs and alternate with wet labs.

  6. Virtual Lab Assignments (distributed via Moodle) • Two types of lab assignment: (1) lab exercises & (2) lab reports • All lab topics have a lab exercise, two lab topics also require reports • Lab exercises require the student to conduct experiments and interpret the results by answering multiple choice questions in Moodle • Lab reports require that students address a specific scientific question by designing and carrying out an experiments and reporting the results and conclusions using a template for producing a brief scientific report

  7. Who is involved in each project? • Bob Desharnais, FT faculty, Project Director • Paul Narguizian, FT faculty, Project Co-Director • Dwight Beltz, PT faculty, BIOL 155 Instructor • Barbara Veno, PT faculty, BIOL 155 Instructor • Ji Son, FT faculty in Psychology, Evaluator

  8. When will the courses be offered? • Fall 2013 (two large lecture sections and 16 all online lab sections = 24 students in each lab with 6 GAs @ 10 hrs/week) • Winter 2014 (two large lecture sections and 8 all online lab sections = 24 students in each lab with 3 GAs @ 10 hrs/week; 8 all wet lab sections = 24 students in each) • Spring 2014 (two large lecture sections and 16 hybrid lab sections = 24 students/lab)

  9. What software/products will be used? • TWO web-based products: • Biology Labs Online (BiologyLabsOnline.com) which uses simulations. • Smart Science Labs (SmartScience.net) which uses videos of real lab experiments.

  10. How many students will be served? • A total of 2-4 sections of BIOL 155 has traditionally been offered per year. This is approximately 400-800 students. • We anticipate being able to offer 6-8 sections per year serving approximately1200-1600 students.

  11. How does the project address “bottleneck” issues? • Online labs would allow enrollments to be increased to the capacity of the lecture hall. • Reduce the need for lab facilities, and reduce staffing costs. • Example, @ CSULA (quarter system) we offer BIOL 155 with 8 lab sections of 24 students each (38.4 FTES). • Personnel needs are 22 units for instruction (6 units for large lecture and lab coordination, 16 units for labs) and 5 hours of graduate assistance (GA). • Using a rate of $1105/unit instruction and $14.80/hr/GA, the total cost is $25,050. A course of the same size with virtual labs, assuming 30 hours of GA help for drop-in assistance and grading, costs $11,070.

  12. Using a rate of $1105/unit instruction and $14.80/hr/GA, the total cost is $25,050. A course of the same size with virtual labs, assuming 30 hours of GA help for drop-in assistance and grading, costs $11,070. • Thus a course taught with all virtual labs could be offered at 44% of the current cost with no impact on physical lab facilities. A similar calculation for half online and half wet labs would be 71% of the traditional cost and would double the throughput capacity of the physical lab facilities.

  13. Student Usage

  14. Student Usage

  15. Student Learning: Natural Selection Natural Selection Concept Inventory (Anderson, Fisher, & Norman, 2002)

  16. Student Ratings

  17. Student Ratings

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