1. LON-CAPA An Overview McMaster University Gerd Kortemeyer June 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 in a library of resources  Sequence them up (put the puzzle together)  Serve them out to the students

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

9. Campus A Campus B Resource Assembly Course Management Resource Assembly Course Management LON-CAPA Architecture 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. 14 … or this kind of randomizing online problems Shared Resource Library

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

21. Resource Assembly “Supermarket” Shopping Cart

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. 23 Resource Assembly Writes module about energy conservation Writes module about momentum conservation Compiles modules about conservation laws Uses whole assembly in his course

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

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

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

28. Communities of Practice

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

30. Conferences Annual user Conferences 2007 Conference 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  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 m b =4g walks from the center to the edge of a disk that is freely turning at 32rpm. The disk has a mass of m d =11g. If the radius of the disk is R=29cm, what is the new rate of spinning in rpm?

51. Solution No external torque, angular momentum is conserved Bug is small compared to disk, can be seen as point mass

52. Student Discussion Student A: What is that bug doing on a disk? Boo to physics. Student B: OHH YEAH ok this should work it worked for me Moments of inertia that are important.... OK first the Inertia of the particle is mr^2 and of a disk is.5mr^2 OK and angular momentum is conserved IW=IWo W=2pi/T then do this.5(mass of disk)(radius)^2(2*pi/T original)+ (mass of bug) (radius of bug=0)^2= (.5(mass of disk)(radius)^2(2pi/T))+ (mass of bug)(radius of bug)^2(2*pi/T) and solve for T

53. Student Discussion (cont.) Student C: What is T exactly? And do I have to do anything to it to get the final RPM? Student B: ok so T is the period... and apparently it works for some and not others.... try to cancel out some of the things that are found on both sides of the equation to get a better equation that has less numbers in it Student D: what did I do wrong? This is what I did. initial inertia x initial angular velocity = final inertia x final angular velocity. I=mr^2, angular velocity = w... so my I initial was (10g)(24 cm^2) and w=28 rpm. The number calculated was 161280 g *cm^2. Then I divided by final inertia to solve for the final angular speed. I found final Inertia by ( 10g +2g)(24 cm^2)=6912. I then found the new angular speed to be 23.3 rpm. This was wrong...what did I do incorrectly?

54. Student Discussion (cont.) […] Student H: :sigh: Wow. So, many, little things, can go wrong in calculating this. Be careful. […] None of the students commented on  Bug being point mass  Result being independent of radius  No unit conversions needed  Several wondered about the “radius of the bug”  Plug in numbers asap  Nobody just posted the symbolic answer Lots of unnecessary pain

55. Where Online Homework Fails Online homework can give both students and faculty a false sense of security and accomplishment Most students got this problem correct  … but at what cost?  … how much physics have they really learned? This would not have remained undetected in hand- graded homework But copying is rampant in hand-graded homework - do you really see the student’s work? No human resources to grade weekly homework for 200 students

56. … at the same time: If you want to know how students really go about solving problems, this is the ideal tool:  Every student has a different version, so the discussion is not just an exchange of answers  All discussions are automatically contextual  Students transcribe their own discussion - compare this to the cost of taping and transcribing verbal discussions  Discussions are genuine, since the students have a genuine interest in solving the problems in the way that they perceive to be the most efficient

57. Qualitative Research Analyze students’ understanding of a certain concept Find student misconceptions Identify certain problem solving strategies Evaluate online resources

58. Quantitative Research Classify student discussion contributions Types:  Emotional  Surface  Procedural  Conceptual Features:  Unrelated  Solution-Oriented  Mathematical  Physics

59. Classifying Discussions Discussions from three introductory physics courses:

60. Classifying the Problems Classifying the problems by question type Multiple Choice (incl. Multiple Response)  highest percentage of solution-oriented discussions (“that one is right”)  least number of physics discussions Ranking and click-on-image problems  Physics discussions highest Problems with representation-translation (reading a graph, etc):  slightly less procedural discussions  more negative emotional discussion (complaints)

61. Degree of Difficulty Harder than 0.6: more pain, no gain

62. Good Students Discuss Better?

63. Correlations Force Concept Inventory (FCI) Pre- and Post-Test

64. Regression PostFCI=5,486+0,922PreFCI+0,24 PercentPhysics PostFCI=7,606+0,857PreFCI-0.042 PercentSolution Meaning what? Students who contribute 100% solution-oriented discussions on the average have 4.2 points (out of 30) less on the post-test, controlling for pre-test

65. Attitudes, Expectations, and Pre-Meds

66. Attitudes and Expectations Reactions to statements

67. Attitudes and Expectations LBS students versus engineering students (published data) on survey clusters Percentage favorable answers

68. Attitudes and Expectations So, while the premed course as a whole had different attitudes and expectations than the engineers: On an invididual level, do  their discussion behavior and their  their performance measures correlate with MPEX?

69. Attitudes and Expectations Not really

70. Attitudes and Expectations Conclusion: Take the Product Warning Label seriously!

71. Curriculum Development It‘s hard to teach physics to pre-meds Need good grades but frequently do not believe physics is relevant Survey on what would make physics instruction more relevant 1=not at all; 3=neutral; 5=very

72. Curriculum Development

73. Pending NSF CCLI with faculty from Human Medicine and Medical Technology

74. Acknowledgements and Website Support provided by  National Science Foundation  Michigan State University  The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation  The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation  Our partner universities Visit us at http://www.lon-capa.org/