Web-Based 24/7 Practice and Feedback

1. Web-Based 24/7Practice and Feedback http://dwb.unl.edu

2. Mastery Learning Key notion is that students will meet established criteria. This means that students need access to unlimited practice. The WWW provides a wonderful medium for this.

3. Experience at UNL • AP Chemistry (nearly 10 years) • 15 courses in chemistry pedagogy for teachers • Materials for teaching reading (underway)

4. DWB Server • DWB servers have ~7 G traffic/month • >50,000 ‘hits’ on midweek school days By comparison, the CEHS has ~10G traffic/month including external backups.

5. 24/7? 24/7 is not a myth. We see traffic nearly every hour of the day, and we see traffic on both days of the weekend. We peak Tues Wed Thurs during the school year.

6. Practice Item Formats We have nine practice/test item formats.

7. Essay Format Essays require human grading. The learner completes an essay. This is stored for reading, and the teacher receives an e-mail notice that an essay awaits reading. The learner sees a model response immediately. Reader comments are forwarded to the learner, but the essay is evaluated P/F.

8. Essay Format

9. Essay Feedback

10. Automatic Evaluation All eight of the other formats are evaluated automatically, and feedback is sent to the learner.

11. Blank This item format is open-ended. Many stems are possible, and each stem can accept numerous answers. “Incorrect” answers are stored for purposes of evaluating the question.

12. Blank Format

13. Blank Format

14. Multiple Choice A standard format where may different stems are possible (up to 9), many foils are possible (up to 8), and the order is variable. Also, the feedback can be specific for each foil.

15. Multiple Choice Format

16. Multiple Choice Format

17. Check Check is a sort of multiple multiple choice. There is one stem, and there are two groups of responses -- accepted and incorrect. The number of correct and incorrect can be varied, so the appearance of the question changes. Learners need to check the accepted answers. A question might be ‘Which of these persons has served as president of the United States,’ and Benjamin Franklin is an incorrect choice.

18. Check Format

19. Rank Given a list, the learner is asked to rank the list (highest to lowest, smallest to biggest, earliest to latest).

20. Rank Format

21. Matrix In this format, learners assign a label to each of several members of a list. It’s a sort of matching format.

22. Matrix Format

23. T/F A paired list of items is stored, one true and one false. A number of these are selected, ordered randomly, and either the true of the false version is included in the item.

24. Matching One or several stems are provided, and the ‘matches’ are chose from button drop-down list.

25. Matching Format

26. Short The most powerful items we have are short answer. They look very much like ‘Blank.’ However, each one is individually programmed. In some chemistry instances, millions of variations are possible -- different chemical reactions, different substances, different amounts, different conditions, etc. The answers are judged to be within an accepted range. Significant figures are evaluated.

27. Short Format

28. Short Format Feedback

29. Short -- Feedback The key feature of the ‘Short’ format is that the learner is shown a worked-out example for the problem using exactly the same reactions, substances, amounts, etc. Learning from worked-out examples has very good learning outcomes.

30. Short (Chemistry)

31. Chemistry Feedback

32. Making This Happen Developing an appropriate, functioning practice system requires a great deal of work. If you want to just write items, look for a commercial program. I heartily recommend EDU developed by my colleague, John Orr. http://www.brownstone.net/

33. Old Back-end I’ve used HyperCard to run behind my Web materials for almost 10 years. HC is no longer supported. You can’t buy a Mac that will start on System 9.2 any more.

34. Runtime Revolution A tool for rapid application development http://www.runrev.com I admit to being very fond, possibly inappropriately fond of this application (RunRev).

35. Runtime Revolution Apache is the server software. The action statement in the form is directed to RunRev. ACGI Dispatcher generates an AppleEvent. RunRev detects this event (with a handler). Information is passed to RunRev. RunRev scripts parse and process the information, creating whatever responses are needed. Responses go back to the sender through Apache.

36. Our Servers

37. Typical Course

38. Item Buttons Disappear Item buttons disappear when a learner logs on after the item has been successfully completed.

39. HC (3/28/04)

40. HC Example

41. WebStar (3/28/04 -- 12:15 PM)

42. Hub (RR, replaces HC Home)

43. Library Stack

44. Example Script

45. Projects Impact of self-explanation on student learning in chemistry. Teaching reading. Communications systems for Our Zoo to YOU.

46. Projects Database. Developing database (MySQL) structure for analysis of learning.

47. Learning RunRev I will be teaching RunRev in TEAC 882A this fall. This is not a distance course. Meets Wednesdays, 7-10 PM at UNL.

48. Questions Trial copy from: http://www.runrev.com Various pricings. A serious license is $1K/y, but a really good stand-alone copy of the application is ~$150.