screenshot of goal setting module

Getting Students ‘Back on Track’ – Interactive Online Modules for CAS Academic Advising

Posted on by Andrew Greene in Analytics + assessment, Blended + online, Discipline, Education

Updated on 9/23/19

Summary

FAS Ed Tech assisted CAS Advising in developing interactive modules for an online course of study to help students on academic probation improve academic performance. Students complete modules prior to meetings with advisors, building skills and knowledge in four key areas: goals and goal setting, time management, learning strategies, and aligning interests, careers and majors.

Goals

  • Develop original static presentations into enhanced interactive online versions
  • Enable learners to individualize learning activities with personalized content:
    • Goals and Goal Setting Module: learners develop strategies for writing effective goals, and create an action plan. Interactive tools are provided for building self-motivation, including how to develop self-efficacy and a growth mindset.
    • Time Management Module: learners can input a week’s list of activities and practice prioritizing them using a drag and drop interaction
    • Interests, Careers, and Majors Module: extensive branching functionality enables learners to match programs of study that align with their interests
  • Track learner progress and input for follow up meetings with advisor

Outcomes

CAS Advising has been offering the Back on Track modules to over 50 academic probationary students per semester since Spring 2017.  Students complete reflective assignments, connecting module content and activities to their personal experience. Learners are able to consider many factors affecting their academic performance as well as strategies for improvement in advance of meeting with their advisors.  Early data is demonstrating both a decrease in course withdrawals and an increase in GPA for these learners, and the Back on Track program has been featured in an article on Academic Advising Today.

The FAS Office of Ed Tech is currently working with CAS Advising to revise the modules with updated content, and accessibility and data-reporting enhancements.  The future goal is to develop versions of the content for the broader NYU community.

Technology Resources

  • Adobe Captivate
  • Adobe Creative Cloud
  • Articulate Storyline
  • NYU Classes
  • SCORM Cloud

Example Module: Motivation and Goal Setting

Click on the link to view the Motivation and Goal Setting Module.

Comete el coco game

Elizabeth Augspach – Gaming for Grammar

Posted on by admin in Analytics + assessment, Blended + online, Discipline, Language instruction, Method, PBL + collaboration

Summary

Professor Elizabeth Augspach (Spanish and Portuguese) conceived of ¡Cómete el coco!, a mobile game that would provide her Intermediate Spanish students with fun, engaging ways to practice grammar topics. Students access the game via their phones, and challenge fellow students to grammar challenges that allow for socially-enhanced, informal language learning.

Learning objectives

  • Bridge informal and formal language acquisition through mobile learning
  • Increase engagement as students learn requisite grammar
  • Allow for socially-enhanced ways to review in-class material

Created in partnership with NYU IT, the ¡Cómete el coco! game is meant to foster collaborative, engaging ways to learn and review grammar.  Professor Augspach sought ways to make grammar more fun, and incentivize students to review more outside of class time.

Student experience

  • Engage with game outside of class to review and learn grammar
  • Challenge other students as they have low-stakes, fun competitions between their peers

Technology resources

Outcomes

  • Students have increased opportunities for learning and reviewing grammar
  • In class and out-of-class learning is connected better
  • Students increase engagement with a fun context for practicing grammar.  The element of friendly, low-stakes competition amongst peers increases engagement

Italian Studies Faculty – Collaborative Assessment for Italian

Posted on by admin in Analytics + assessment, Discipline, Language instruction, Method

Summary

Professors of Italian Language (Italian Studies) developed a shared assessment bank to gauge students’ comprehension, listening, and writing skills.  Using the Tests & Quizzes tool within NYU Classes, they created rich, multimedia quizzes that provide automatic grading and instant feedback for students.  

Learning objectives

  • Increase formative assessment opportunities for students by providing instant feedback
  • Support collaboration in the assessment-building process
  • Allow for custom assessment creation associated with a department-created textbook

Italian Studies assessmentItalian Studies created its own textbook and workbook to reflect the cultural, grammatical, lexical topics prioritized by the Department, and provide a lower cost option to students. Formative assessment, ongoing monitoring of student performance and learning, is essential for learning as it helps students and instructors identify learning gaps or areas of improvement.  Director by Professor Nicola Cipani, Italian Studies faculty used the NYU Classes Tests & Quizzes tool to create a shared multimedia test bank that could be used by the entire department for courses in New York and Florence.

Student experience

  • Access multimedia quizzes through NYU Classes
  • Receive instant feedback

Project workflow

  • Coordination of assessment creation, distributed across multiple professors

Technology resources

Outcomes

  • Online test bank that can re-used across professors and courses
  • Increased opportunities for students to assess their learning
  • Exploration of a low cost, online textbook (initial estimates could save 400 students in NYC and Florence between ~60 in textbook costs)
Gen Physics - Mastering Physics

Andre Adler – Active Learning in the Large STEM Lecture

Posted on by admin in Analytics + assessment, Discipline, Method, Sciences

Summary

Professor Andre Adler (Physics) uses various online interactive platforms to engage his 350+ General Physics classes. Students engage in active problem solving before, during and after lecture.

Learning objectives

  • Foster engagement to counter restrictions of space
  • Increase opportunities to practice materials and identify points of confusion
  • Facilitate collaboration by offering problems that students work on together

In this video, Professor Adler speaks about engaging students and facilitating learning in a very large STEM lecture course. One challenging aspect of this 350+ student course is that it meets in the Skirball Theater, an amazing space that has fixed, theater-style seating and thus prevents active collaboration.  To counter the constraints of the space, Professor Adler used two online systems to spur engagement and link in class and outside of class activities.

Student experience

  • Access engaging and relevant practice problems before, during, and after lecture
  • Pose questions to the professor during lecture
  • Respond to fellow students’ textbook annotations and questions

Technology resources

  • Learning Catalytics, a classroom engagement system that delivers questions for group problem solving. Responses are entered using a laptop, tablet or smartphone.
  • Perusall, a platform that allows for text annotation and discussion
  • Mastering Physics, a tutorial and homework system that syncs to the textbook and offers pre-class and homework assignments. Pre-class assignments prepare students for lecture and homework assignments explore the concepts further through a variety of problem types not found in the textbook.

Outcomes

Charts, from left to right, asked the students to assess the following:

  • LC helped me to stay engaged during lectures
  • LC helped me to identify points of confusion during lecture
  • LC helped me to review for graded assignments outside of class
  • LC helped me to understand specific concepts

Selected students’ qualitative comments:

  • I thought that overall it was a very useful learning tool. While many science courses have sample questions in class, the fact that Learning Catalytics participation was graded provided an effective incentive to really stay engaged and work on the problems. Additionally, it allowed me to return to the problems later and review the answers.
  • I very much appreciated using the learning catalytics software, and wish that it was a resource for Physics I and any other science course. I liked that it kept us engaged during class, provided a useful study tool for exams, and I especially liked that we got credit for coming to lecture prepared.
  • It made it significantly easier to ask the professor questions, often it can be intimidating to ask in front of the hundreds of other students. Additionally it showed us what other students were thinking, and didn’t make us feel so alone if we got a problem wrong.
screenshot of google drive

Ben Stewart – Hacking Google Forms for Formative Assessment

Posted on by ds4583@nyu.edu in Analytics + assessment, Discipline, Method, Writing instruction

Summary

Professor Ben Stewart (Expository Writing Program) uses Google Forms as a formative assessment tool in his Writing the Essay course. Students respond to prompts during class that have them revise and edit their writing (and thinking). The instructor has created a script that allows individual student responses to be shared as individual documents with both the students and teacher, simplifying the feedback loop between both instructor and student as well as between students.

Learning objectives

  • Develop informal, in-class writing into substantial texts
  • Engage in peer review

Student experience

  • Complete writing assignments prior to class, as well as in-class
  • Participate in discussion around writing assignment and readings
  • Complete Google form “worksheet” in-class, which includes additional writing prompts and reflection
  • Review peer worksheets and offer feedback

Project workflow

  • Participate in FAS Innovation in Language Teaching workshop, May 2016
  • Develop custom Google Form/script function that compiles student responses into individual student Google Docs (as opposed to standard compilation of all responses into Google Sheet) and shares them with instructor and students
  • Follow up consultations with FAS educational technologist and central partners to simplify workflow

In the video below, Professor Stewart demoes his custom Google form script with a live audience during our Innovation in Language Teaching Conference.

Technology resources

  • Google Docs
  • Google Forms
  • Google Sheets

Outcomes

  • Enables a much quicker turnaround time between student production and teacher feedback

“[This process] is really clean organizationally: the teacher has everything all in one place and doesn’t need to worry about whether the students’ have or haven’t shared x, and there’s no hunting through emails for attachments or links to documents.” – Ben Stewart