Using online environments for teaching large classes - Case study Video Lecture | Teach Online: A Comprehensive Approach for Teaching Online - Professional Skills

when teaching larger class sizes an
online environment can provide many
opportunities for increased student
engagement group work and self testing
in this case study Professor Alan cross
key from the University of New South
Wales explains how he uses a blended
learning approach in his engineering
materials and chemistry course with 700
first-year students Alan also highlights
the importance of providing Student
Orientation and support when first
introducing an online component and
discusses the benefits of integrating
online resources and tutorials group
work peer assessment and self testing in
the course the courses engineering
materials and chemistry it's a
foundation course for first year
engineering students it's a blended
learning course and we teach about 700
students a year in two cohorts we used
to run the labs with a demonstrator
giving a mini lecture beforehand
initiative was to improve that pre lab
exercise by using computers and then
eventually to transfer that online
come on Chester ease
environment co-op you also have to sink
it out and you have to introduce the
students to young Lochinvar I mean you
can't just put the stuff up there and
say can't do it and really the more
detailed you are online the less they're
gonna come back and ask a question so
you're actually saving yourself a whole
lot of effort the week 1 orientation
activity is intended to get them to walk
through the online environment so I
actually walk through the online
environment class this particular course
has a lot of online material and it's
necessary to give the students some sort
of guidance as to where they can find
things so we get them to do some what
they call orientation exercises starting
in like 1 we get them to actually submit
something online just to make sure
they've got their browser settings right
and that's done here I have help and if
a queues so this is actually a link to
the discussion board and also a set of
frequently answer questions with
hyperlinked answers the other thing is
there's no point having a help board if
it doesn't get answered so so you've got
to answer it regularly and they've got
to know how often you're going to answer
it I answer it daily I say to not use
the email except for personal issues for
general things to post on discussion
board because lots of other people have
the same problem and also someone might
answer quicker than I do by doing all
that it does create a community between
you and the students
I guess the driver initially was to get
the tutorials online and we did a review
of the course at the same time inputs
more online materials in so the first
tutorial I do which is a graded tutorial
is the tensile testing tutorial this is
actually what we see when we do that
test
that's quite a rich animation and then
they can go back in here and click on
the different parts and there's a few
words about what's happening I feel this
is a very good example of a learning
object we have some self test questions
they're dragging drops it gives them
some numerical examples and they
hyperlink the solutions like so the
students love the flexibility they can
spend as long as I want in the body of
the tutorial so students with English as
a Second Language found it very useful
to be able to work through it in their
own time and go through it as many times
as they want
the other thing we have that I'd like to
show you is a group project first of all
we have project details let's tell some
what we can do they put them into groups
in week two have five people in each
group and they have to come up with a
group contract this is really to get
their group organized we provide group
discussion boards in the group's section
and we also provide a whiteboard so each
group has a group discussion board and
you can see there's been 147 postings we
moderate the marks for individuals using
an online peer assessment a system
called IPA and they really have
difficulty with that and again are sort
of Silicon crass by saying when you
leave here and a professional engineers
you're going to have to review other
people's work and this is well again do
this and also we think that by reviewing
other people's work it makes you more
objective about you're reviewing your
own work and anecdotal evidence does
indicate that it actually improves their
performance and of course the third
thing is it allows us to provide more
detailed feedback then what we can
ourself
now lots of people live a long way away
they might just have my class and that's
all on that daily my it's been three
hours traveling each way to getting here
I could understand that they might care
for another option so I'm all about
flexibility I think regarded as flexibly
as you can and cost my course also from
caters for a little different learning
styles we provide a whole are themes and
course resources there's lecture notes
we also record the lectures video record
them as well as voice record them if we
go away and do that experiment we find
that the materials in the pink Scion so
we also put the lab sheets for the lab
and we also have PDF versions of the
accessible tutorial so they can download
it free through development of online
materials is very time consuming and
it's very difficult for academics to do
so we had a dedicated developing
developer there who could assist the
people develop the online materials
the online environment does offer some
tremendous advantages for creating a
community in online learning that you
can't create in class and I think it
flows across into the class by virtue of
this tutorial being online we only had
two Tom Tabor one-hour blocks for the
labs and that freed up the timetabling
immensely and has made our life a whole
lot easier online submission is very
useful because you know his submitted
yeah things don't get lost there's a
record of when they're submitted the
other thing is that the grades have
actually improved considerably we really
brought up the bottom of which is the
failure rate by 50%
the unknown environment is particularly
useful for large class stations each
students opens his computer and is
having a conversation with you through
that computer they it allows it to be
much more personal breaking down those
barriers that the Arsenal in barriers
that but yeah we're all in this together
ready to learn and I'm here to help you
and I'm doing all those things to help
you
you