Kyle and Guy
I must say that working with the Education Department on the assessment piece of this project has been one of the unexpected joys of this summer!! Kyle Shanton and Guy Cox have been about as supportive and excited about this project as I am! They have worked tirelessly on an absolutely fabulous assessment plan and for that I an eternally grateful. Thanks Guy and Kyle!!! You are really fun to work with!!
So, it has been our observation that assessments of teaching with technology are carried out by the invested faculty/teacher. They want it to succeed and work hard to make it so, so there is virtually no writing about these sorts of projects “failing”. Kyle, Guy, and I were increasingly concerned that these studies, by their assessment plans (Professor doing the teaching and the assessment) are potentially biased. So, we are taking a different approach. Guy and Kyle will be doing all the assessments without me knowing any outcomes until the end of the academic year. Below is our assessment plan. IRB approval has been applied for, waiting for their comments.
1) Online Pre-course assessment to all students (modified from a Comfort with Technology survey and a Learning goals survey developed by Jason Long and Keely Roen at Penn State University)
2) 2×2 Study using “Comfort with Technology” and “previous performance in chemistry” as the variables
3) Half the class gets tablets to use in class, all get DyKnow access from their home computer tio review and write notes. So the technology in class verses control is measurable, as separate from using technology outside of class.
4) Bimonthly surveying of students and interviews of individual students
5) “Exit interviews” for all students who choose to drop.
6) End of semester interview and assessment of perceived acheivement of learning goals (which will be correlated to their actual performance on key questions on Final exam)
7) This is a blind study, I will not know who is being interviewed, which of the four groups each student is assigned to, I will not know if students are using DyKnow after class or not. I will not know who is or isn’t completing their assessments. Nor am I completely invested in this technology, just curious, and excited, by the possibility of this new way to engage with students.
Kinda cool!! Weird me getting excited about the scholarship of teaching, not just Hypervalent Iodine Chemistry. . .