Paper Science 215 is an introductory engineering course required of all paper Science majors. The course, taken during the sophomore year, is prerequisite to most upper division Paper Science courses. Student understanding of the concepts and skills addressed in this course is critical to their success, both in further Paper Science courses and in their internships and, ultimately, their careers.
The project I conducted with FACETS’ support helped me make sense of moving this course to an online environment, allowed me to develop ideas about learning activities appropriate to various learning modalities, construct new materials, and use these materials in two different offerings of the class. The encouraging results of these changes have inspired me with additional ideas, and prompted me to ask more questions about student learning than I had when I began this project.
The Online Environment—Managing Expectations
My FACETS project involved Paper Science 215, a four-credit course and prerequisite to almost every upper division course in the Paper Science major. In this course, students learn the fundamentals of solving engineering problems. As such, it is a very important part of the Paper Science curriculum.
During the 2003 spring semester, a program called the Summer 2003 Curricular Redesign to introduce faculty to online teaching was announced. I became interested, and discussed the idea of moving Paper Science 215 partially online with the rest of the Paper Science faculty. After we all agreed that this was a good idea, I applied and was accepted into the program. The idea was to make this important course in the major more accessible to pulp and paper mill employees, many of whom had previously taken this course over the years. A side benefit would be the creation of online materials traditional students would find useful as well. Over the summer of 2003, I attended several seminars led by faculty from UW Milwaukee. Although these seminars were interesting, they provided me with little help or guidance for my task to create useful instructional materials for students in an introductory engineering course.
I continued to struggle with course development throughout the fall 2003 semester, and I grew apprehensive about the impending spring offering of the course. I had many difficulties with the course management software, most of which were simply part of the learning curve when beginning online teaching. More significant were the creative issues that I encountered. I had trouble coming up with innovative, interactive materials to put into the course. In retrospect, perhaps my expectations were too high. I did not have the skills to translate my ideas into online materials, and not enough time to develop these skills before spring semester began (specifically, learning to use software tools to develop learning materials). The end result was a gradual erosion of confidence in my ability to create this course.
Early in the fall semester, I received an email about the FACETS seminars that would start in spring 2004, and the possibility of summer support for course development. Intrigued, I applied for the seminars and was accepted. During the spring semester, I wrote a proposal for a FACETS summer stipend to work on the development of this course. This proposal was accepted and funded.
FACETS—Insights to Support Online Learning
The insights I gained during my work with the FACETS program fall into three major categories congruent with the topics of the three FACETS seminars: generational issues, learning styles and modalities, and Backward Design.
The characteristics of the Millennial Generation were not a complete mystery or surprise to me. I have two teenage children, both of whom provide me with daily examples of the expectations and habits of Millennials. The key characteristic that I have observed in both my own children, as well as my university students, is their intense desire for interactive learning experiences. The idea that an instructor might serve as the “sage on the stage” really doesn’t work well for most of these learners. This made my work over the summer all the more relevant and important.
I also realized that an understanding of how the brain learns would be very useful to me as I endeavored to expand my range of teaching strategies. The second seminar addressed this topic briefly, leading me to read more on the subject. Although I am not yet at the level of understanding that I desire, it has become clear to me that a variety of assignments and activities is critical for students to achieve an acceptable mastery of the material in my courses. The hard part is identifying and creating those activities!
A primary focus in my FACETS proposal was getting more information about learning styles, and creating materials suitable for different types of learners. Before the second seminar, I did not perceive any difference between learning styles and learning modalities. After the seminar and some independent discussions with Leslie Wilson, I now see that learning styles are an extension of personality type. These preferences are typically distinguished with contrasting dualities such as abstract/concrete and random/sequential. Learning modalities, on the other hand, represent the learners’ preferred sensory method of interacting with materials, including information intake and rehearsal. I had not previously been aware of these different perspectives on student learning, and I now keep both in mind when designing learning activities.
I have given the VARK assessment (www.vark-learn.com) to all the Paper Science majors, and discovered that they are predominantly kinesthetic learners. I find this intriguing, and I wonder whether this is a characteristic of the type of learner drawn to engineering in general. Nonetheless, we do have some students from the other modalities, including several visual learners and a few read/write and auditory learners. Another interesting observation came when I gave the VARK instrument to our faculty/academic staff members. Of the five taking the assessment, three were kinesthetic, one visual, and one read/write. Interestingly, the profiles of these five agree with their dominant teaching methods. Comparing the student evaluations of these faculty members, it became clear that our students rated faculty that taught using methods more in line with their preferred learning modalities more highly than those who did not. This makes me wonder whether this is generally true or not.
. . . over my years in the classroom I had not given much thought to course design. . . My early attempts at writing a syllabus consisted of copying the course description from the catalog, figuring out which chapters in the textbook we would try to cover, when the tests would be, and how the grades would be determined
To be completely candid, over my years in the classroom I had not given much thought to course design. Having no exposure to pedagogical methods and other educational research, I suppose this is not surprising. My early attempts at writing a syllabus consisted of copying the course description from the catalog, figuring out which chapters in the textbook we would try to cover, when the tests would be, and how the grades would be determined. What bliss, to not be excessively concerned about whether the students actually learned anything or not!
I first heard about “learning outcomes” in the context of outreach courses for industry personnel. This seemed like a good idea to carry over into my undergraduate courses. And, I began the long journey to my current thoughts on course design, which were radically shaped by the third seminar on Backward Design.
I spent my seminar stipend on Understanding by Design and its companion workbook by Wiggins and McTighe. The ideas in these books dramatically changed my view of how a course should be put together. If the goal of the course is to produce students who truly understand the material, Wiggins and McTighe offer a three-step process for designing a course so that successful students achieve understanding. They also suggest that most instructors approach the course design process incorrectly.
Wiggins and McTighe posit that instructors must first identify the desired results by asking some fundamental questions: What is your vision of the students at the end of the course? What should they know and be able to do, and at what level of mastery? What do they look like at the end of your course? What is it about the discipline that is worth knowing? What are the enduring ideas that are central to the discipline? What life experiences and misconceptions do students bring into the course? The answers to these questions guide the creation of learning outcomes for the course.
The next step is to determine what constitutes acceptable evidence to indicate that the students have succeeded. How will you, the instructor, know that your students understand? During this consideration of assessment and evaluation possibilities, deliberation of the level of mastery desired of the students is critical. For introductory level courses, the level of understanding that students may be expected to achieve can be measured using traditional techniques; i.e. multiple choice or true/false tests and quizzes, simple homework assignments. However, higher levels of understanding and mastery are difficult to measure with these lower level tools. Authentic assessment of higher-level functions requires the use of “performance tasks”, which may take many different forms, depending on the discipline.
In my early approach, the activities, which chapters to cover, how much homework, etc, came before the assessment considerations, with little or no consideration of students´ learning outcomes. Writing the tests then became the most difficult part of the course!
Finally, instructors must decide what assignments and activities will lead students to master the material at the desired level. Notice the contrast here with my original approach to course design. In my early approach, the activities, which chapters to cover, how much homework, etc, came before the assessment considerations, with little or no consideration of student learning outcomes. Writing the tests then became the most difficult part of the course! In the “Backward” approach, the creation of the learning activities becomes the most difficult step, in my opinion. This is where the instructor has the opportunity to develop and use activities that engage different learning styles and modalities. The use of some types of learning style/modality instruments can make this process easier, or more difficult. Knowing which types of learners are in the course can guide instructors to use more appropriate learning activities, and increase the odds that the students will succeed. This task can be more difficult if there is a wide variety of learning modalities in a given group of students, as this requires more effort from the instructor to develop a greater variety of learning activities. The final consideration in course design is to make these steps clear to the students at the beginning of the course. When students know what is expected of them and how they will be evaluated, their chances of success increase significantly.
A New Framework for Paper Science 215
As I applied these new insights during my summer project, I began to think about the course in a very different way. Instead of stepping through the textbook chapter by chapter as I had for the previous sixteen years, I considered the material in a different light. I went back to the basics: what really are the things that I want the students to know and be able to do when they successfully complete my course? After considerable reflection, it all boiled down to five basic learning outcomes. When students successfully complete Paper Science 215, they must understand and be able to:
- determine physical properties of process streams (e.g. density, humidity)
- recognize the type of problem they are dealing with devise strategies to solve the problem;
- perform calculations correctly; and transfer these skills into the ”real world.”
When framing the course in these terms, the types of assessment activities became more obvious. Since the primary objective was for the students to master problem solving, this activity took precedence both in the classroom and online. This brought about a small, but significant change from the way I had taught the class in previous years. In the classroom, I used to solve problem after problem, the students passively copying my solutions as I wrote them on the board. This activity consumed most of the class time in the course. Now, I still present problem solutions to the students, but I hand out copies during class so that we can move more quickly through the solution. I then pose other problems for the students and allow them time to work these during class, on their own. While they puzzle over these problems, I walk around the classroom, looking over their shoulders, asking them questions about what they are doing. This allows me to see what difficulties the students might have, and clear up misconceptions when they arise.
I also changed the order of the material studied in the class, picking and choosing applicable sections from the textbook to coordinate with the learning objectives. As an example, there are many different physical properties for the process streams that engineers must handle. These physical properties, and the methods for determining them, are spread throughout the textbook. I chose to pull this material together in the online portion of the course, creating the connections for the students. I was afraid that having the material somewhat out of order, with respect to the textbook, would confuse them. So I asked one of the juniors who took this course in the previous year what she thought about the idea. She assured me that as long as I kept the students informed about pages and sections in the text that were involved, they would have no trouble. She was correct.
During the summer of 2004, I developed an array of activities for the course that ranged from in-class problem sessions, described above, to new homework problems, to working with the department’s paper machine. I am very happy with these activities, and they all lend themselves with the opportunity to authentically assess the skills that I want the students to develop. I used these activities during both the spring 2005 and the fall 2005 offerings of Paper Science 215. The spring semester course had only four students enrolled, limiting the amount of feedback on the new materials. The fall semester course had sixteen students, which gave me more information about my efforts. Surveys of the students indicated that they appreciated the in-class problem- solving sessions, and that the homework problems were helpful. The most interesting piece of feedback that I received was from a student who failed the course. He admitted that he had not put in the time required to succeed but that, “it was a good course and it was fun having you as a teacher. ”
The online portion of the course still challenges me. I have incorporated some new activities, including some “guided problem solving” and quizzes in Desire 2 Learn that generate different problems for each student to solve. (I allow the students unlimited attempts to achieve success). However, the level of sophistication of the material does not meet my expectations yet. I still need to devote significant time to mastering the software so I can create more engaging and interesting online activities for the students. I have a long list of ideas for “learning objects” to develop for this course.
I have had numerous discussions about this project with my colleagues. . . I continually bring the conversation back to "What do we want the students to know and be able to do?" instead of "What chapters should I cover in this class?"
Future Challenges
I have had numerous discussions about this project with my colleagues. They are very supportive and interested in my insights and progress. I have also proven to be a bit of a pest when discussing course planning, both mine and theirs. I continually bring the conversation back to, “What do we want the students to know and be able to do?” instead of, “What chapters should I cover in this class?” With age comes a bit of wisdom, and I think that I know when to hold back just a bit, and when to push the point. I like to think that all of our department faculty members now look at their courses from the “developing understanding” point of view, at least some of the time.
My primary challenge in the future lies in the development of authentic online assessments for this course. I have thought a lot about this topic. My fundamental question is how to assess engineering problem solving “skills” rather than “content”; i.e., “what can they do?” as opposed to, “what facts do they know?” Evaluating a student’s ability to solve problems and helping them to learn this skill in a face-to-face situation is second nature for me. Doing a good job of that online is a very different matter, even somewhat tricky. Simply having students submit traditional assignments electronically is one way to deal with this challenge in the short term, but would require significant, individual feedback on each assignment to help students increase their level of mastery. I would very much like to develop more sophisticated online tools to help students expand their problem solving skills; I am not at all sure simply translating traditional assignments to an online environment will address this issue. Simply putting lectures and problem solutions online will not achieve my objectives.
My current ideas on the type of online materials I want for this course require me to acquire skill with Macromedia Flash© software. This software allows construction of interactive, animated activities that students find engaging. An example is the learning object I worked on with a team from UWSPs’ Information Technology. This “learning object” teaches the student to use a chart to obtain physical properties of air.
This learning object is accessible at:
The interactivity of online materials is critical to effective pedagogy for the types of learners that we have in the Paper Science major.
Over the past two years, I have experienced more “aha!” moments than in the previous five. Nagging questions about the success or failure of various classroom activities have been answered, and I have discovered an entirely different set of possible research questions, such as:
- Do faculty really teach using methods in line with their preferred learning modalities?
- Do students really evaluate faculty more highly when teaching methods match their learning modalities?
- Are kinesthetic learners drawn to the engineering field?
These questions, and the scholarship of teaching and learning in general, have gotten me excited about my work again. My enthusiasm carries into my work with my students, and that is a good thing. I am very grateful to the FACETS program for providing me the means for this change.
Brief Bio: Karyn came to UWSP in 1989, and is an Associate Professor in the Paper Science Department. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UCLA, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Pulp and Paper Science and Technology from the Institute of Paper Chemistry. Her paper “The Development of an Online Psychrometric Chart Tutorial” won an Honorable Mention award at the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual. Contact Karyn at: kbiasca@uwsp.edu