DELTA Staff Put Math Professors at Ease

As Director of Instructional Innovation Services David Howard, Instructional Designer Yan Shen and AVP for Distance and Distributed Education Rebecca Swanson spoke with an audience of math professors Tuesday March 1, they were met with reservations about how to incorporate distance education and learning technologies into mathematics courses.

To ease these curious minds, Shen discussed her work with three math instructors led by Teaching Assistant Professor Molly Fenn. Due to a large demand and limited amount of resources, MA 231, Calculus for Life and Management Sciences, is being redesigned into a hybrid course. Instead of meeting three times a week, the students and instructor meet once a week face to face for active learning in class. The other two face-to-face meetings are replaced with online learning through Moodle Lesson.

Three methods for recording videos to instruct students on how to perform various math problems were considered: My Mediasite, a Mediasite-powered recording studio and a classroom with Mediasite recording equipment. The classroom solution was chosen because it allows instructors to have ample space to write down mathematical processes. When the instructor writes something down, it directly shows up on the slide and can then be exported as lecture notes available to students.

Students are also given time to practice problems before seeing how they are solved and moving to subsequent videos. There are approximately three to five practice problems available after each small topic, none of which are graded, to encourage students to attempt what they have just learned.

“The purpose of the lecture videos is to deliver the content, then have the exercises to give the students the opportunity to practice,” says Shen.

There are currently no live recorded sessions for this course because it creates issues with editing and enforcing a time limit. However, instructors still want (and receive!) student feedback.

In order to gain feedback, there is an opportunity to ask questions in a discussion forum. Students can upload pictures if they would like to show their instructor a particular problem. Instructors may also schedule collaborative sessions or phone calls so students receive the attention they need and deserve. It is also important to note that students’ performances are recorded so instructors can see how well they performed on exercises before teaching the next class.

While this method of online learning might be appropriate for a hybrid undergraduate course, concerns were raised about implementing the same technology in graduate mathematics courses.

“The problem with graduate classes is you might be doing more interaction and possibly less content delivery with students. You need to know how to handle both pieces. When you move online, you figure out how to do things more separately — content delivery and interaction,” says Howard.

It was also stated that the type of interactions instructors have with their students depend on learning objectives or outcomes for the course. When working with an instructor on a DELTA Grant project, DELTA designers begin analyzing learning objectives with instructors and that serves as a guide in designing the type of interactions and activities for the class. This is essential because the interactions and activities can all be so different.

Audience members still questioned just how far DELTA staff members were willing to go to accommodate various professors and courses.

“We always try to start with what the instructor wants to do. We try to guide them toward a set of practices that we know work or a set of technologies we already support,” says Howard. However, they are always willing to deviate from traditional technologies.

“Two-thirds of what we do, we do within the enterprise tool set and the other third is something that we are exploring with the instructor for that particular course,” Howard notes.

While instructional designers have no issues exploring these new technologies, it can make it difficult for DELTA to assist instructors using tools that the designers themselves are not familiar with. On the flipside, if there is a positive experience with a new tool set, it has the potential to help other instructors and students.

Live lectures and lecturing in general also appeared to be areas of interest among audience members. While document cameras and Livescribe may be used to capture content directly, NC State offers numerous ClassTech classrooms where instructors can record themselves. There are also DELTA operator-observed rooms where technicians are watching the class and respond to the recording needs during class. Although there are several recording options to choose from, students still remain the focus.

“We look at who the students are. Are these undergraduate students or more adult learners who prefer to learn through lectures? So, depending on what type of learners they are, their flexibility, schedules and preferred learning styles, that can influence the way we use technology and design the instruction,” adds Shen.

There are also courses with no lecture component at all, which allows for more flexibility in delivery. However, it comes back to the issue of stability. Students oftentimes prefer one professor to another, and because of that, DELTA thinks it is important to keep the faculty in the courses. As Howard states, “We don’t want classes where students really feel like they’re completely alone.” It is important to keep a professor’s personality in the course as much as possible.

It takes a substantial amount of time to record a class. While this may seem intimidating, one must also remember that planning is key. Ideally, instructors should begin planning nine months in advance and note when they are going to tape a recording, how assignments should be submitted, any breaks in curriculum and so on. Each time the course is taught, however, the amount of time and work invested in the process decreases.

“Do it iteratively,” Howard suggests. “Get it out there. Get some feedback from your students. Then, either on your own, with your colleagues or DELTA staff, note what you would like to improve the next time you teach.”

DELTA served more than 19,000 students last year. This large number may seem a bit daunting or concerning to professors who fear online techniques and know students oftentimes need individual attention. Although it is a large program, DELTA knows how to work one on one with instructors so students receive the best possible education.

“We pride ourselves on the very individual attention we give to faculty who are in control about how they offer their course, the kinds of technologies they use and their pedagogical approaches. We also pride ourselves on excellent student services, so whatever we can do to support instructors, we will do our best,” says Swanson.