Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel taught Statistics 104: Data Analysis and Statistical Inference as an online summer course for credit to seven Duke students. Dr. Çetinkaya-Rundel and all of the students met daily for 90 minutes using WebEx, Duke’s online conferencing service. In order to prepare students for the new technology, Dr. Çetinkaya-Rundel met with her students during the last week of Spring classes to set up and test student computers for web conferencing, as all class meetings during the summer took place online and attendance was required. This meeting also allowed everyone to meet each other in person.
Course description
This course was flipped; students were expected to prepare before class and be active in class. Here’s how: before the class met virtually, students were required to read the text, available online, guided by extensive learning objectives and supplemented with videos. This course used a modified version of team based learning. Each unit began with a readiness assessment: 10 multiple choice questions that students answered on Sakai at the beginning of a virtual meeting; students then repeated the assessment as a team. The remainder of the class time featured students working together on application exercises and some discussion of the material. Mini-lectures were supplemented with multiple choice-questions students answered using the polling tool. In addition, students completed other assessments and handed in problem sets online using Sakai and contributed to the course Forums. Class meeting sessions were recorded for students to refer to later.
Grading
Students were graded on participation, problem sets, labs using RStudio for statistical analysis, readiness assessments, performance assessments (in Sakai, after each unit), an independent research project, a midterm and a final (both administered in Sakai during course session; students were visible on their webcams).
What did students think?
Students commented that they liked the convenience of the online class (not having to be on campus) but they also thought that the “web chat” structure (the synchronous sessions) made it feel as if they were actually in a classroom – “So it is the best of both worlds”. Most students in the (albeit small) class said that they learned most during the synchronous sessions.
They also liked having “various opportunities for help with concerns/questions” such as the discussion forum and online office hours.
They felt that the class was versatile and that “it ensures we are understanding the concept and don’t get bored during lecture through lab exercises, polls, discussions.”
What did Dr. Çetinkaya-Rundel think?
Dr. Çetinkaya-Rundel thought that the course was a great experience, and that the synchronous sessions were completely worthwhile. However, she felt that the small class size complemented the structure of the course, which allowed for discussion among students, working together even though physically apart, etc. She commented that this structure may not be scalable to a larger sample size, especially with the current version of WebEx as the conferencing tool which only allows for six simultaneous video feeds as once.
She also found that collecting and grading assignments in Sakai was much faster than responding to paper assignments, because when different students made similar mistakes, she could use the same comments. Therefore, students could get feedback much more quickly than when she hand-graded the assignments.
She was also quite impressed by the students who, upon her suggestion, formed study groups that met on Google Hangouts. These meetings were the virtual equivalents of students meeting up to work together on campus – not attended by faculty, and completely informal. While not all students partook in the virtual study groups, those that did benefited greatly from them.
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I think you made some good points about how to learn the students about the new tools and the technology in a class.