This project is following up on a promising pilot study of pen-enabled mobile computing devices. It expands and investigates an emerging teaching paradigm for formative assessment known as the Tablet Model, in which every student "goes to the blackboard" by using digital ink and free, web-based software to individually respond to open-format questions posed by the instructor. The instructor receives instantaneously a variety of materials digitally (text, diagrams, equations, graphs) and uses these in the same class meeting to focus and clarify student thinking, modify misconceptions, reinforce correct understandings, increase student metacognition, and generally use class time more effectively. This approach is workable even in classrooms with large enrollments.
Widespread adoption of the Tablet Model logically requires 1) less expensive avenues of implementation; 2) broader, research-based evidence of its effectiveness in diverse classroom environments; and 3) guidance on best practices. This project is providing substantially more information to meet these needs. This project measures learning gains achieved when using open-format questions with a variety of low-cost pen-enabled mobile computing devices for real-time formative assessment. These gains are compared with gains achieved from using more traditional teaching paradigms. It is also measuring the variable impact on these learning gains of situational factors: STEM discipline, course content, institution type, and student gender and ethnicity. An effort is being made to identify best practices in order to assist adopters. Both laboratory and lecture-based courses are being adapted to this approach -- at both the introductory and advanced undergraduate levels of instruction -- in the disciplines of physics, chemical engineering, and biology. This work is being carried out in an engineering university and a community college.
STEM educators face many challenges as they prepare tomorrow’s scientists, engineers, and citizens. This project explored a novel way to better meet that challenge by using pen-enabled mobile technology to facilitate real-time formative assessment. Formative assessment probes what students understand during the journey that leads to their mastery of a concept. The instructor uses this information to modify that journey by changing the speed, correcting the route, or smoothing the path. It also helps the students know where they are in their journey toward understanding (metacognition). Although it may be cumbersome and time-consuming to implement in the classroom, formative assessment has broad theoretical and research-based support. It actively engages both students and teachers and it informs the learning process. Today’s rapidly improving, lower cost technology was used in this project to overcome many of the obstacles to effectively implementing formative assessment in undergraduate STEM classrooms. In this emerging teaching paradigm, every student "goes to the blackboard" as he/she utilizes digital ink (on a tablet, iPad, or smartphone) to individually respond to open-format questions posed by the instructor. The instructor receives the formative assessment (text, diagrams, equations, graphs, etc.) instantaneously; since it is graphical, it can be scanned quickly to inform subsequent instruction. The instructor uses this feedback to immediately focus and clarify student thinking, repair misconceptions, reinforce correct understandings, increase student metacognition, and use class time more effectively. In short, even in STEM classrooms with enrollments of over 100, we have been able to utilize today’s technology to recreate an active learning environment similar to that enjoyed by Socrates as he helped a handful of students learn by asking them questions. InkSurvey, the web-based software that facilitates this real-time formative assessment, is available for free worldwide from its server at Colorado School of Mines (ticc.mines.edu). Part of this project focused on the refinement and improvement of InkSurvey. It is now fully compatible with many types of student-owned devices, reducing the institutional burden of equipping students with additional technology. Since it is web-based, there is nothing for the students to download locally. Improvements made during this project make InkSurvey more user-friendly to both students and teachers, more broadly adaptable, more economically feasible, and more sustainable in undergraduate STEM classrooms. The major portion of this project explored the effectiveness of this potentially transformative pedagogical model. The study included diverse classrooms in two different institutions (an engineering university and a community college) and three disciplines (physics/engineering physics, chemical engineering, and biology). The targeted courses ranged from smaller enrollment (26) to larger (110), lecture-based to laboratory-based, introductory level to advanced undergraduate level, and STEM learners that included some groups with relatively high percentage of women. In all cases, the project measured learning gains achieved when using open-format questions with a variety of low-cost pen-enabled mobile computing devices for real-time formative assessment. These gains were then compared with gains achieved when using other teaching paradigms, providing a measure of the effectiveness of this model. In a supplemental portion of this project, a novel application of this pedagogical model was used to foster greater curiosity in STEM students. The ability of the instructor to pose open-format questions is a strong advantage over multiple choice or short-answer questions, since this better replicates the students’ future workplace tasks. Furthermore, it also allows the instructor to more deeply probe higher level thinking skills. This project investigated the next step: guided by real-time formative assessment, can educators effectively nurture 21st century skills, such as curiosity, in STEM students? Curiosity serves as a strong motivator, both in learning and in the scientific process. To nurture it, students were first made aware of 6 broad categories of questions that might be generated when a particular model is studied. After a prompt (a demonstration, a video, a presentation, etc.), they were asked to submit via InkSurvey questions that reflected what they were curious about. In subsequent discussion of questions submitted by their peers and by experts, students were essentially apprentices in learning how to ask meaningful questions. With practice, both the number of questions and the number of categories asked per student increases. Publication of the final results of this project is anticipated in 2015. Additionally, emerging best practices for implementation are also being disseminated. The results of this project have the power to transform undergraduate STEM education, utilizing technology to facilitate research-based best practices with minimum new infrastructure demands. It better positions the STEM education community to take pedagogical advantage of increasingly available and increasingly affordable pen-enabled mobile computing devices. The real-time formative assessment, easily and seamlessly collected during instruction, provides revealing glimpses into how students think as they struggle to master new material. This could yield unprecedented insights into how students learn STEM concepts and processes and have far-reaching implications in educational research and classroom practices.
