1. The SCALE Efficiency Projects Lanny Arvan l-arvan@uiuc.edu Associate Director, SCALE http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/

2. Very Brief History n Finished 3rd year of Original Grant n Last year SCALE supported about 80 ALN courses with 8500 students per semester – ALN courses across the board n First year experience, capstone, in the middle n large class, small class n science, engineering, humanities, social science n 9 Efficiencies Projects (targeted)

3. Efficiency Projects by Categories

4. Lessons About Online Quizzes n Students generally positive. They like – Repetition till they get it right (Mistakes ok) n Random questions or random numbers – Enforced deadlines - Server based. CDs can’t do this n Some things students don’t like – Slow response time to submissions – Hints that are vague or inappropriate – Help from online TAs (with FC conferencing) n They expect the programs to be self-contained.

5. Other Sources of Productivity - Econ 300 n Traditional section 60 students, GA grader – Not much interaction out of class – Homework not taken seriously n ALN sections (180 & 60 students) – Undergraduate peer tutors n Many office hours - online and F2F n Undergrads act as graders - “problem specialists” – Students organized in teams – Problem set solutions become the threads

6. Other Sources of Productivity Increase - SPAN 210 n Fall 97 – 2 ALN sections (40 students) n Met once a week n “Diary posts” in FirstClass where other students made responses. Instructors acknowledged quality of posts but did not make written responses – Other sections traditional (20 students) n Met three times a week n Spring 98 - All ALN

7. Other Sources of Productivity BIO 122 n Virtual Labs – Animations to simulate actual labs – CyberProf quizzes – Fewer wet labs for GAs to supervise n Less grading of lab notebooks n Savings on lab materials – Much of the productivity increase captured by the GAs

8. Other Sources of Productivity - Differential Equations (C&M) n NetMath - Distance Learning via phone, e- mail, Timbuktu and peer mentors n Apply NetMath approach to “subset” of on- campus C&M students – Totally self-paced course – Instructor time limited to writing and evaluating exams – Popular with some engineering students who carry high loads.

9. Amortizing Development Costs n Case Study - ECON 300 – Development costs measured via SCALE grant n Course release, summer support, student programmers – Savings in operating costs via larger section size? – Q: How many semesters till cost recovery? – A: Depends on: (1) Allocation of faculty cost (2) Compensation for larger section? (3) Discount factor

10. Objective Performance Comparisons n Very difficult to do controlled experiments – Lock-in to the teaching approach – Ethical Issues n Campus Policy - if two alternative approaches are used students must be able to self-select n Faculty don’t want to be shown up – Cross sections preferable to time series n Changing the teaching approach may change what is sensible to be tested

11. Evidence We Have n Span 210 (First semester implementation) – 2 midterms and a final (no significant difference) n Span 210 (Second Semester - All ALN) – Comparable Final - significantly better than the fall n Stat 100 (Mature ALN) – common questions on 1 midterm - ALN beat non-ALN

12. More Evidence n ECON 300 – Common exam questions on two midterms and a final. – No significant difference between Ng’s (new to ALN) section and Arvan’s (designer of ALN approach section

13. Where Are We Headed? n More SCALE Efficiency Projects – Spanish Project – Curricular Embrace in MicroBiology – Remedial Physics for students with week preparation n Articulating a vision of change that is not too threatening. – GA employment reduced (finance new hires in IT support?), Faculty employment intact