Student Comments: Given a Choice would you choose: text, OLI, neither

3: OLI, Text, Neither It is hard to say because I am used to only using text books. OLI can only teach some one so much, OLI needs to be a supplementary tool used with a great teacher. I still prefer textbooks because if I ever need to refer back to something I have the text book.

3. OLI 4. Comments: A useful tool for trying to learn by yourself. Can be confusing, but class is used for asking questions which is helpful.

If this class was offered again, I would prefer it OLI with easier words to understand

3.Neither

3. I prefer OLI

3) OLI definately has its advantages, and with the world starting to move towards paperless, I think this is a really good option

. OLI is a better tool than a text but it does lack some of the access to extra materials or fully written out examples.

3.OLI

3)OLI: I like oli because you can do it on your own time anywher you have internet, you dont have to carry around a book only a computer which makes it easier to do

. 3. I believe that OLI is an incredible resource and I hope that I can experience it again.I believe that this should deffinately be used again.

. 3. Textbook, because I prefer to read from paper rather than a computer screen. 4. Comments: I can OLI is trying to innovate teaching/learning methods and it may be very successful, but it was not for me.

3. I would prefer: OLI because I would rather do work on the internet rather than by hand.

3. OLI

. 3) OLI: i would choose oli if i took this class over because i liked how the pictures move and you can practice on the pictures.

If taking this course or a similar one again I would like having an OLI supplement. Comments: Good Job!

3. OLI

3. OLI It was a great tool on helping us learn the only thing i have to say is that some of the material needs to be presented in a different or better manner.

3. OLI 4. I thought that OLI was very helpful with the pictures, and stuff. Sometimes it was a bit overwhelming, like I said before, with all the words and how things were worded. Overall it was good.

3.Text.

3. OLI

3. Neither

3. Neither 4. Comments: I would stick to one OLI a night and give more problem homework so we get a chance to have more pratice as a part of class.

OLI 4. Other comments: OLI has helped me maintain a daily study habit more. It was really useful.

3. Neither 4. Comments: none

3. OLI

3 OLI; its free, it has interaction, unlike many books out there that all you can do is read

#3 OLI

Student Comments: What I liked about OLI

. 2: I liked Not having to purchase a text book was great. Also using the hints to help solve example problems was incredibly helpful at times. The instant feedback on test scores was great.

2. I liked: The example problems where it would give hints on how to solve those problems. The interactiveness was nice.

. I liked: the availability of examples, and the graphics that show movements.

2.I liked: the visual things seeing how things moved and how it uses real life pictures to describe statics. I also liked how it focused on the one topic.

. 2. I liked: the animations. They were really helpful in understanding concepts being taught rather than just reading about them.

2) I liked the interactiveness of the OLI program as I went through the modules

I liked; the use of interactive systems to either get it right or not. The hints helped and the green and red your got it right or wrong flagging

. 2. I liked: I thought the actual visuals were handy. It helped me see what is going on when a force is applied somewhere. I also liked the hints to the practice problems. That's nice when trying to figure out what I;m doing wrong.

2)I liked:how they gave you hints if you didnt understand how to do something so that you could understand it better

. 2. I liked: I loved the interactive problems, they made it alot easier for me to learn the material. I also really liked how the teacher could see how we did and base the next days class on it

2. I liked: The section summaries were good

2. I liked: I liked OLI because it gave me good knowledge experience from something other than a text book. My favorite part was the sum up's at the end of each section. Thats where i obtained most of my information or the key points that I needed.

2. I liked the doing by learning. The instant feed back made sure you truely understood the concepts. Not having to buy a book was nice also.

2)I liked: I liked that there were clickable pictures and pictures that moved

I Liked: I really liked the interactive parts of how you could manipulate forces on objects and have it show the different change in a system.

2. I liked: the hands on interaction. The hints also helped if you were stuck. I also liked how it broke the module up into different sections and the sum it up at the end of each.

2.I liked: I liked the fact that it made us think on the topics that we would go over the next day so when we got to the next day we were not completely lost on what we were going over and what was going on.

2. I liked; I liked that it had problems that actually moved and hints. I liked how the hints helped me to figure out what to do and I liked how if I got a problem wrong it would tell me why.

2. I liked: The interactive problems throughout the modules were very good for me to make sure I understoof the concept.

2. I personally liked the video-walkthroughs of the problems, and found them to be the most effective way for me to see how to do a problem.

2. I liked: The fact that there were some interactive activities to get me to learn the problem better. Also the pictures were nice add-on to the module. That kept the module from being dull.

2: What i liked: I liked the activities that we did that showed you if you got it right or wrong along the way in the module it helped me understand and see what i am doing not just read about it through the module.

2. I liked: There were step by step example problems to work with and I thought it was really helpful. Also, I think the quizzes were also really helpful because I usually take what I get on the quiz as feedback. 3.

2. I Liked: The interactive parts of OLI helped the most for me. They were extremely helpful when they had detailed feedback explaining why your choice was correct or incorrect.

2. i liked the learn by doing. it helped concrete the concepts that i read in the text.

2. what I liked; i really ejoyed the interaction that OLI has to offer. It gives students the chance to use the concepts and if you are having trouble they give very easy to follow hints and tips. this also helped me remember the concepts i was working on.

. #2 I liked: The interactive Diagrams and video

Student Comments: What to improve about OLI

1: Improvements OLI needs to have instant feed back for its tests. Not just the scores but if something is wrong there should be an explanation as to why the correct answer is what it is. If it is a long problem then the steps should be shown how it was found. This was done in the example problems using the hints most of the time and was incredibly helpful at times. Also maybe posting a histogram of how well other people scored on their tests would be helpful for the class to see so that they know where they are in relation to the class. It was helpful in another class that I took

1. Improvements: I think that OLI would be helped by some extra example problems at the end of each module. The current ones are useful, but I think having more than the small number already available would have been very helpful for me.

Improvements: I would prefer it if it used easier words to describe things

1.improvements: I think that the improvements should first be off with the point system. There shouldn't be things that are worth more than 10 percent of the total amount of points. I also think that some of the things are worded or made to hard to understand. The other thing is when you select things after a amount of time it should give you the answer and explain things. It took me a long time to figure out the 5 parts of the subsystem because of this.

1. Improvements: Some of the more complicated problems should have better step by step solutions

1) A major improvement I think OLI could use is to have the option to retake the quiz at the end of the chapter, maybe up to 3 times, with slightly different answers on each following. This should be done for grading purposes. The first quiz results could still be used in class to clarify questions.

Improvements; The formulas in many of the examples did not follow the standard method of writing them. It made it hard to even see what the help was without the correct parenthesis ( ) around the values. Also assumed multiplication is unacceptable.

1.Improvements: I think the content could be dumbed down a little. I could not get to the basic concepts some of the time because I would get lost trying to figure out what he was talking about. A lot of the material seemed heavy when the concepts are pretty basic. Also, on the quizzes, maybe they should be more straight-foward. Sometimes I couldn't solve a problem because I didn't know what you were asking

1)improvements: I think that the how things are described could be better

1. Improvements: The wording is often far too lengthy, and the questions on the quiz are sometimes quite confusing. perhaps consolidating some information would help

1. Improvements: render math formulas as graphics rather than text like some wikipedia pages. Some of the hints were not helpful, especially when the concept did not make sense. I would rather see worked out solutions. The end quizzes were not fair sometimes, e.g. 30 pt.s for a true/false question. The moving visuals were probably good for most people, but I personally did not like them. I was able to visualize them without the graphics, it seemed superfluous.

1. Improvements: I think the only main improvement that could be made is that the words could be explained more. Some of the words in this are not commonly heard of by us college students and quite often confuse us.

1. OLI was well laid out but I found it hard to follow the equations. Many times they were bunched together and at first glance looked very confusing.

1) improvements: I think some improvements could be made on how things are described, maybe a little less wordy.

Improvements: OLI was nice, a few more of the explaining videos could be handy. Watching a problem get solved out is very good at showing how to approach in what order when reading an instruction list just doesn't quite cut it.

1:improvements: When oli explained calculations it was very hard to follow and understand what they were doing because of the multiple use of the word normal. Also grading on the quizzes at the end of each module is a little disproportional because one question is worth 5 points while the other is worth 20 points.

1.Improvements: There needs to be improvements on how some of the material is presented. Granted the way it was presented made me think on the topic at hand but at times i was very frustrated with the way it was presented.

1.Improvemet; The improvements needed on OLI is that it needs less words. I think the amount of words that was in OLI was distracted me from learning the materials because I was so focus on trying to understand every single word.

1. Improvements: The biggest improvement I can think of is to reword a lot of the quiz questions because some were confusing. Also, more variety in the types of diagrams used to illustrate points, it was tough to look at a lot of the same drawings over and over and be able to keep them organized in my head.

1. Improvements: I feel that OLI could have been improved by having more example problems worked out to follow along with, as well as having easier to read explaination of concepts.

1. Improvements: I would add more interactive activities to get the reader hooked. As well as crazy videos of statics concepts being implemented into a real world situation. On the interactive section of the module it would be nice if you were to get the right answer if they told you why it was the right answer.

1. Improvments: I think that it should be a little less wordy at somepoints during the modules.

1. Improvements: I think some quiz questions were worth too much than they should be. Also, I think some of the test questions weren't as clear.

1. Improvements: Some of the real life pictures could be improved, they're somewhat dull. The videos aren't usually to fun to watch. The equations are very difficult to understand because of the way they are written. A equation editor of some sort should be utilized.

1. Improvements: * Module 5 was way to long for the information that was communicated. * There was many times where words overwhelmed an easy concept * When there was a problem solved for us on a module, it was not obvious what was being done. the word "Normal" is used at least five times in each of the equations... very confusing

1. Improvement; one thing that can be changed is when a student takes a test and get to see their results, they should be able to she how they got it wrong and what the correct answer is.

#1 Improvement:A Couple module are too long and I think that it would be benefital if you were to break it down to smaller portion

Final Exam Day

Whew! We made it. 14 days at three hours and fifteen minutes per day. Over the past half of the course I have not written reflections each day. But nothing has changed...

The value of "my response" and quiz results has been immense. Each day I spend 30-40 minutes before class digesting this information and using it to craft my approach to the first hour of class. This led to a multitude of valuable student-teacher dialogues. Often we went past one hour and closer to 90 minutes.

As a class we divided our time, attention, and learning three ways:

*Conceptual learning
*Applications learning
*Meeting the challenge of designing a spreadsheet that would analyze the forces in a 3-d octahedral truss that is 180 feet high with 37 levels and could be used to support home-size wind turbines.

*Conceptual learning was accomplished through: pre-discussion the day before, OLI modules at night, post-discussion the day after, and a near daily organization of the cumulative conceptual learning. Today students turned in a "learning report" that includes a self-developed statics concept map, a list of statics concepts learned, and for each concept learned: description of concept, current confidence level in the concept (low, medium, high), and what steps will be taken to continue learning that concept beyond this course. As I write this the students are taking the SCI.

*Applications learning: We learned how to solve the following problems, did one or two per day for homework, and had a 100 point test each day that entailed solving one of these application problems: 2d equil of pt, 2d equil object, 3d eq pt, static equivalency, shear and moment diagrams, centroids, moment of inertia and parallel axis theorem, truss analysis by both methods.

*Truss design - we spent one hour per day on this topic by the end the students broke the truss down by level (9 unkown two-force members per level), and were able to use excel to analyze the truss given any loadings. We had a community member whose idea it is to bring the truss to market spend this hour with us each day to add context to the problem.

Assessments:
force concept inventory - pre
motivates strategies for learning questionnaire - pre and post
University of Colorado pencil/paper 7 question concept test - post
ICC Engineering 3 question fe-like comp exam - post
daily 100 point exam (applications)
Final exam (5 applications problems, 3 essay questions on learning)
Student responses to OLI - suggested improvements, things they liked, and an answer to the question if the course were to be done again would they prefer: OLI, reading text, or neither.

The next post will have the results of the student response to OLI.

Module 7,8,9

I apologize for the lapse. I had a TUES proposal due yesterday and ended up burning the candle at both ends to get it in.

Class, however, has gone on. I continue to be extremely impressed with the way OLI gets my students to think and to bring questions to class. At the beginning of my career I have textbook reading assignments before class. It didn't take many years to realize nobody was doing them. Nor did I as an undergraduate. Thus I had to change my approach to teaching - teach as if no reading has been done.

Now we have OLI -Statics. It is better than any textbook - has moving simulations and is interactive and has a tracking component in the "my responses" and the quizzes. So now the students do the advance work -- and it is powerful as a stage in the student learning.

Here is aggregate feedback for the last 3 modules:

What do you know now about your students’ understanding of this material that you did not know before? Much - they have pinpointed their areas of misunderstanding both on the quiz problems and in the modules.

Based on this information, what do you plan to do, if anything? The question and answer session from each day has been started with a 5-10 minute response by me to the students. Followed by their follow up questions. Each of these three days we ended up at the smart-board with the quiz answering specific details.

Is there other information that would have been helpful to you? No

Were the quiz results helpful? _ scale 1 to 5 "4-5"

Were the students’ My response input helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 "4-5"

Was % completion helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 still very poor

Module 6 Feedback

What do you know now about your students’ understanding of this material that you did not know before? Overall students understood couples better from this module than from my past teaching.

Based on this information, what do you plan to do, if anything?

For those who still had issues (~40%) the problems centered on Where do couples act, Where do you calculate couples about, and How do you calculate the couples?

My plan is to give a test at the beginning of class on 2D eq of an object with a couple on it and have them solve for reactions. After the test, we will identify that those two forces do in fact make a couple and then move it all over to see what the effects are on the reaction forces.

Is there other information that would have been helpful to you? No

Were the quiz results helpful? _ scale 1 to 5 5

Were the students’ My response input helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 5

Was % completion helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 2

module 5 Reaction

This is the module where students turned their frustration on to OLI. They felt the module was too long with too much information and too confusing. I have to agree with them. They got lost in the forest.

To recover we had a long discussion about learning. That it takes struggle, takes reading, takes time, takes different views, and takes being able to classify what we do and don't know. We put OLI in perspective as a tool in the process that the student owns and not as the end all.

What do you know now about your students’ understanding of this material that you did not know before? They got frustrated with the amount of information in the module.

Based on this information, what do you plan to do, if anything? Have a discussion on the context of this tool and its advantages over a text book.

Is there other information that would have been helpful to you? No

Were the quiz results helpful? _ scale 1 to 5 4

Were the students’ My response input helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 5

Was % completion helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 2

Reaction to Module 4 Feedback

What do you know now about your students’ understanding of this material that you did not know before?

Their trouble spots:

Breaking forces into components

Calculating Moments

Signs

Based on this information, what do you plan to do, if anything?

We spent the first hour of class practicing many examples of breaking forces into components and calculating moments. Students came to the realization that what seemed difficult actually wasn't very.

Is there other information that would have been helpful to you?

Nothing other than better accuracy in %completion.

Were the quiz results helpful? _ scale 1 to 5 "5"

Seeing the trouble areas then putting the quiz on the projector and showing students the work is extremely helpful.

Were the students’ My response input helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 "5"

It is in this section that I see the verbal needs of the students. It drives the first hour discussion.

Was % completion helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 "1"

This option doesn't work very well. For instance a student can go all of the way through the module diligently, enter comments into my response, and still see %completion as 0%.

Reaction to Module 3 Feedback

What do you know now about your students’ understanding of this material that you did not know before? I was able to come up with a list of trouble areas. In descending order of frequency:

*calculating moment arm

*rotational vs translational

*cw vs ccw

*new terminologies

*tendency to rotate

Based on this information, what do you plan to do, if anything?

have discussion on each area and show examples

Is there other information that would have been helpful to you?

no

Were the quiz results helpful? _ scale 1 to 5 "4" quiz average was 65 % most errors on calculating moment arm

Were the students’ My response input helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 "5"

Was % completion helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 "3" everyone completed so I guess that is good

Day 2 Class Reaction

Quiz - Gave students a multi-system body and asked them describe interactions between various subsystems and to draw an FBD for one of the subsystems.

q-n-a:
1. checked their OLI-Notebook - some students went way too far in depth, others not enough - used Goldilocks parable to try and get everyone in right direction ( I am looking for ~ 1 page of highlights plus questions per module)

2. discussed sense vs. direction and discussed springs gave examples of each

3. put module 2 quiz on screen and answered questions

Quiz - had students draw fbd for subsystem from quiz (they all neglected interaction between pulleys and whatever is supporting them)

Middle hour:

Local entrepreneur presented on wind turbines and an idea to build towers out of 6 foot members in an octahedral shape that would not require a crane to assemble. We listed all of the design constraints and design objectives then decided we need to be able to analyze forces at many different points on tower. (we need some tools to do this)

Last hour:

3-D equilibrium of a point was discussed and an example done in class. Made connections to 2D equilibrium and to our needed knowledge for the tower project.

Used ppt presentation made by Anna and Paul for module 3. Used clickers. This went well. Had two places where students evenly split. Then went to group discussion before voting again. I feel like this is very useful and appropriate as a setup for module 3.

Homework:

OLI Module 3 - Record muddiest point in my response
3D equilibrium problem handout of a radio tower - find force in the three guy wires.

What do you know now about your students’ understanding of this material that you did not know before?

The two muddiest points are student confusion between sense and direction and spring/cable force direction and place on FBDs.

Based on this information, what do you plan to do, if anything?

I will discuss both of these issues in the q-n-a session and make a point of coming back to the topics later for reconnection.

Is there other information that would have been helpful to you?

not really

Were the quiz results helpful? _ scale 1 to 5 3

Were the students’ My response input helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 4

Was % completion helpful? __ scale 1 to 5 -- Not seeing it in report yet.

Initial Feedback on Reports - Misleading % Incorrect

I am a little confused on the quiz feedback. As you can see this question at the time I copied it, had 19 respondents. There are 3 parts. For these parts there are a total of 19*3=57 possible responses. There are 5 incorrect responses. The percent incorrect is 5/57 = 8%. Yet the feedback to me in this page and on the report in general is that there are 21% incorrect. This is misleading. The five incorrect responses are being counted against only 19 possible rather than 57 possible.

The issue is exacerbated in problem 2. As you can see the feedback is that there are 53% incorrect responses. Eek how bad are the students doing? Well not that bad... There are only 11 incorrect responses out of 54 possible.

May 17, 2010 Modules 1 and 2

I am teaching statics in a 14 day May-block. There are 31 students in the class. The framework for the class is OLI. Each day there are 3 hours of class.

Hour 1:
*Cumulative Test (15 mins)
*Q n A from previous night's OLI modules (30 mins)
*Quiz from just discussed material (15 mins)

Hour 2:
* Statics Fun - Finding real life ways to learn and interpret statics

Hours 3:
* New statics application - Fundamentals of Engineering type problem (20 mins)
* Prepare for tonight's OLI using Anna Dollar's power-point presentations

For each student we have a pre-test on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ).

Each day I will blog about my reaction to the OLI interface feedback and any other pertinent thoughts.

Ron U