Using The Web To Promote Active Learning Outside Of Class Time

In this paper, the Web is viewed favorably as helping learning in large class settings. The Web's overall advantage is to generate a virtual presence for the students to feel guided outside of class time. Two important aspects of this guidance are presented that promote learning. First, tracking and feedback through maintaining a Frequently Asked Question page, and second, active participation and critical thinking by requiring students to self-mark their assignments. 1. Large classes, active learning, and technology: in and out of the classroom Teaching large classes is not a new phenomena when considering the academic world as a whole, with courses such as psychology 101 or biology 101 having size of well over 100 students for many years. Immediate consequences of teaching large classes are the lack of individual contact with students and more limited feedback on students work. An extra dimension is added to this problem when Engineering courses are taught to large classes. Courses such as Microprocessor-based design or Fundamentals of Software Design have a practical (hands-on or lab) component which is essential to the understanding of the material presented in class. In such courses, the practical component can unfortunately not be taught by the professor but is put in the hands of Teaching Assistants (TAs) as lecture groups are divided into smaller groups to fit in the lab environment. In such setting, the lack of feedback from the professor is often exacerbated by inconsistencies among TAs. This lack of individual attention and the variability factor introduced by having different people participate in the teaching can be quite devastating for students, especially freshman students just out of high school. Physical problems with no obvious physical solutions lead to search for virtual solutions. We propose that a virtual presence through the Web will increase the "simulated" direct contact to students. Furthermore, we think the Web can facilitate active learning outside of class time, by making possible the implementation of a self-evaluation approach. The next section presents in detail an example of a Software and Computer Engineering course in which the Web was used for these two purposes. But first, we will discuss the positive impact of active learning on students, and the use of self-evaluation as one active learning strategy. Active learning has been discussed and presented by many researchers and practitioners as an efficient way of promoting learning (Bonwell & Sutherland 1996). Active learning is a mindset focusing on keeping students active and involved with their own learning. "Students are simply more likely to internalize, understand and remember material learned through active engagement in the learning process." (Boud 1995) 3 Even if the concept of active learning is quite general, it P ge 7.284.1 “Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ” 2002, American Society for Engineering Education” is most often discussed in the context of lectures, presenting ways of moving from traditional lectures to more active lectures. All proposed activities, hints, and tricks (Silberman 1995) have one goal: keeping the student active and mentally participating during lectures. But learning does not only happen during class time, especially in a large class context. That out-of-class time should be well managed to promote learning, and in our view, this should be done via an active participation toward the development of critical thinking. In a traditional way, active participation can be promoted by the use of assignments. In a less traditional way, active participation toward critical thinking can be promoted by having the students not only do but also mark their assignments. The idea of self-marking has been advocated in the past 10 years (Boud 1995, Hobson 1996) as a way of promoting self-criticism. Self-marking is often put in a larger context of self-assessment in which the students set their own goals and monitor their own progress through the semester. "When students assess themselves they develop insights into their own learning." (Gregory et al. 2000) In fact, as reported in Stiggins (1994), in both Bloom's taxonomy (p. 240) and Quellmaz's framework (p. 249) for naming and describing dimensions of learning, evaluation ends the list as involving complex thinking capabilities. Bloom defines 6 levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and Quellmaz defines 5 levels: recall, analysis, comparison, inference, evaluation. Unfortunately, in the traditional teaching, we tend to promote only the most basic part of learning, that of knowledge or recall. Maybe because this part is not only the easiest to teach, but also the easiest to test. Kubiszyn and Borich (2000:61) make a distinction between observable and directly measurable learning outcome (list, recite, build, draw), and unobservable ones (value, appreciate, know, understand). The observable learning outcomes are certainly related with the lower levels of both Bloom and Quellmaz's taxonomies. At the higher end of the taxonomy, the evaluation level (Angelo & Cross 1993) is defined as : "Making judgments about the value of materials and methods for given purposes. The individual can make appraisals that satisfy criteria determined by the student or by others." This is in line with Boud's definition of self-assessment as "the involvement of students in identifying standards and/or criteria to apply to their work and making judgements about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standards" (p. 5). The whole concept of self-assessment, making the student engaged and critically thinking is very much part of the larger concept of active learning. 2. A concrete example In Winter 2001, the course "Fundamentals of Software Design", was given by the same professor to three different sections (2 in English and 1 in French) with a total of 350 computer engineering and software engineering students. This course has a very important lab component, but the professor cannot be present during the lab sessions (because that would make up for an extra 24 hours a week). The management of 350 students is therefore complemented 1 In Winter 2002, the same course will be given to 3 English sections and 1 French section for a total of 500 students. This course is now required as well for Electrical Engineering students. Two professors will be sharing the load, the author will be giving the 3 English sections (360 students). P ge 7.284.2 “Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ” 2002, American Society for Engineering Education” with the management of 14 TAs. We will look first at how a FAQ page was used to establish a virtual presence, and second we will present our self-assessment approach.