tech.aided.teaching Research and Learning Improvement Project Summary of Accomplishments Ramón V. León, Ph.D. University of Tennessee

What Has Been Accomplished Development of a Range of Tools for Lecturing and Conducting Classes so That Faculty Can Use All Their Teaching Talents Development of Technology to Automate Routine Tasks to Free Faculty’s Time for Activities that Directly Contribute to Student Learning Providing Faculty with Tools for Easily Creating, Maintaining, and Distributing to Students “Custom Textbooks” Made Out of Free Web Sources; Thus, Saving Students Money on Textbooks Providing Faculty with Tools for Adding Online Students to Traditional On-Campus Classes that Synergistically Exploit the Increased Student Diversity (e.g. Experienced Working Professionals vs. Traditional Students with the Content of Courses Fresh in Their Minds) to Create Superior Learning Experiences for Both Types of Students Providing Faculty with a Methodology for Approaching Teaching as a Research Enterprise Enabling Faculty to Treat Teaching and Learning as Processes That Can Be Improved Using the Process Quality Improvement Methods and Tools Developed by W. Edwards Deming

What Has Been Accomplished Development of a Range of Tools for Lecturing and Conducting Classes so That Faculty Can Use All Their Teaching Talents Advanced annotation capabilities for use during lectures as either stand-alone or on top of PowerPoint slides More thorough answers to student questions More “agile” teaching where students partially determine what is covered in each lecture and the course as a whole Multimedia capabilities Real-time improvement of teaching material, such as, by being able to add comments, pictures, and screen shots of software output

What Has Been Accomplished Development of Technology to Automate Routine Tasks to Free Faculty’s Time for Activities that Directly Contribute to Student Learning Making lecture material—both before and after the faculty’s class annotations—available to students on a website that automatically updates in real-time even as one lectures No worries about students having the latest version of the class notes No need to upload anything to Blackboard! Students always have access to the most-recent version of faculty’s teaching material with possible after-lecture corrections and improvements Faculty can clean and improve their class notes after each lecture since student have immediate access to these improvements via the self-updating website

What Has Been Accomplished Providing Faculty with Tools for Easily Creating, Maintaining, and Distributing to Students “Custom Textbooks” Made Out of Free Web Sources Reduce or entirely eliminate the need for students to buy textbooks and other pricy learning materials Superior to traditional paper textbooks because They can contain interactive elements such as sound, video, and animations (See the next two slides) They can have a large number of extra material and links that students can use if they want to learn extra material

Online Custom Textbook: Supported by YouTube Channel Click on the picture to play

Online Custom Textbook: Interactivity to Help Students Learn Click on the picture to be able to interact with the animation.

What Has Been Accomplished Providing Faculty with Tools for Adding Online Students to Traditional On-Campus Classes That synergistically exploit the increased student diversity (e.g. experienced working professionals vs. traditional students with the content of courses fresh in their minds) to create superior learning experiences for both types of students That increase educational opportunities for non-traditional students Who cannot come to campus Who would have a greater selections of courses Traditional students also benefit, especially in the summer, because they can take courses wherever they happen to be Almost no marginal cost for additional online students Increased university revenue by adding tuition-paying students at no extra cost Some of this extra revenue could—and should—be passed to students in the form of smaller tuition increases The author designed and had an engineer built a sound system to support discussion among face-to-face and online students and for them to hear each other’s questions and comments

What Has Been Accomplished Providing Instructors with a Methodology for Approaching Teaching as a Research Enterprise Application of the scientific method to teaching and learning Generating (aggressive: 10% failure rate) hypotheses about what could be effective in student learning Suggested by the the latest research on how students learn (Cognitive Science of Learning) Suggested by what has proven to work in class as established by supporting data Influenced by what the latest technology has made possible Empirically testing these hypotheses Rigorous data collection after every lecture to refine these hypotheses, discard them if ineffective, and generate new hypotheses to test

What Has Been Accomplished Measuring of Teaching and Learning Effectiveness Student satisfaction survey after every lecture Anonymous except for knowing who answered them or not. (5% of course graded based on survey response) Survey questions What was the clearest to you in the last lecture? What needs more explanation? What grade would you give the last lecture? Why did you give this grade? How could I have improved the class? How was the sound quality in this last lecture High quality microphone used Lectures incorporate this feedback to improve lecture to lecture They start by going over what students said needed more explanation Classes and lectures are continuously being tailored to the unique personality of each individual class

What Has Been Accomplished Development of Tools for Faculty to Treat Teaching and Learning as Processes That Can Be Improved Using the Process Quality Improvement Methods and Tools Developed by W. Edwards Deming

What Has Been Accomplished Use of Other Teaching Tools Collaborative student learning Using online breakout rooms Using Top Hat Monocle student response system Judicious used of flipped-classroom ideas More accurately described as outside-class enrichments to generated class discussion

Instructor Access Anywhere Any Time* Access via Cell phone Texting Voice Skype Google+ Blackboard Collaborate Office hours in the faculty’s office Face to face Online via Skype Student are very considerate Requires limited faculty time

Stat 567: Grade for Last Lecture* *Fall 2012

Stat 201: Grade for Last Lecture* *Fall 2012

Stat 560* Anonymous Survey *Su 2011

Future Plans Creating a workshop on the effective use of technology in teaching Copyrighted by the author Version available to UT faculty if an adequate development grant is secured Development courses with breakthrough content such as introduction to statistics from a business analytics viewpoint taking advantage of the methods described above to increase learning effectiveness Publishing of research and accomplishments

Objectives for a Workshop Provide a Range of New Tools for Lecturing and Conducting Classes so That Faculty Can Use all Their Teaching Talents Show How to Automate Routine Tasks to Free Faculty’s Time for Activities that Directly Contribute to Student Learning Provide Faculty with Tools for Easily Creating, Maintaining, and Distributing to Students “Custom Textbooks” Made Out of Free Web Sources; thus, Saving Students Money on Textbooks Provide Faculty with Tools for Adding Online Students to Traditional On-Campus Classes that Synergistically Exploit the Increased Student Diversity (e.g. Experienced Working Professionals vs. Traditional Students with the Content of Courses Fresh in their minds) to Create Superior Learning Experiences for Both Types of Students Provide Faculty with a Methodology for Approaching Teaching as a Research Enterprise Provide Faculty with Statistical and Other Tools for Treating Teaching as a Process That Can Be Improved Using the Quality Improvement Tools Developed by W. Edwards Deming

Summary of Accomplishments Development of a Range of Tools for Lecturing and Conducting Classes so That Faculty Can Use All Their Teaching Talents Development of Technology to Automate Routine Tasks to Free Faculty’s Time for Activities that Directly Contribute to Student Learning Providing Faculty with Tools for Easily Creating, Maintaining, and Distributing to Students “Custom Textbooks” Made Out of Free Web Sources; Thus, Saving Students Money on Textbooks Providing Faculty with Tools for Adding Online Students to Traditional On-Campus Classes that Synergistically Exploit the Increased Student Diversity (e.g. Experienced Working Professionals vs. Traditional Students with the Content of Courses Fresh in Their Minds) to Create Superior Learning Experiences for Both Types of Students Providing Faculty with a Methodology for Approaching Teaching as a Research Enterprise Enabling Faculty to Treat Teaching and Learning as Processes That Can Be Improved Using the Process Quality Improvement Methods and Tools Developed by W. Edwards Deming