Mentorship: development of an on-line Ed Measurement course

Mentor: Craig Rice
Dept: Education
Phone: (401) 865-1984
Email: crice@providence.edu

Mentee: Suzanne Walker
Dept: Health Policy and Management
Phone: (401) 767-4730
Email: suzy814@msn.com

Craig Rice. I teach using PowerPoint in most of my classes and utilize textbook websites to supplement lecture materials. In addition, I use Angel in a number of ways. In my day school courses, I use Angel to grade students as well as manage my electronic communication with them. In addition to day school courses, I teach Education Psychology on-line for the School of Continuing Education. This course ran in the Summer 2003 as well as Fall 2003. It is anticipated that this course will be offered on-line three times per year.

Suzanne Walker. I am familiar with the following technologies: Email, MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, graphic calculators, overhead projectors, VCRs, scanners, printers, and digital cameras. I attended one half hour session on Angel, but have not implemented it in any of my classes.

Project Resources

How might you use any purchased materials after you finish this Project?
Adobe Acrobat Professional 6.0 will be utilized by the mentor and mentee to publish curriculum, rubrics, and student assignments.

Project Info

Start Date: February 1, 2004
End Date: February 1, 2005

Milestones: May, 2004 — Educational Measurement and The Child with Special Needs are both more than half developed to run in the Fall, 2004. Sept. 2, 2004. Both courses begin on-line. Dec. 2004; both courses are successfully completed. Jan. 2005; both courses are offered on-line for a second time.

Project Objective

The primary objective of this project is the development of an additional on-line course for the School of Continuing Education (SCE). Students enrolled in SCE courses are generally non-traditional students who require alternative ways to complete program requirements. The new on-line course, Educational Measurement, is required for the Teacher Certification Program (TCP). Currently only Educational Psychology is offered on-line for students in the TCP.

A secondary objective is for the mentor to develop another course, The Child with Special Needs in the Regular Class, for TCP.

These courses are intended to be strictly on-line allowing students the flexibility to complete assignments at times conducive to their schedule. The content of these courses will be entirely delivered through ANGEL.

The use of PowerPoint, video streaming, on-line quizzes, and message boards are the primary way students and professor interacts. Having taught two classes on-line, Craig will teach Suzanne for example how to upload PowerPoint presentations, class notes in the form of MS Word documents, how to hyperlink to websites outside of ANGEL to support student learning.

During the Spring semester, Suzanne will be teaching an on-campus section of Educational Measurement. During this semester, Craig will work with Suzanne to develop the on-line course to be ready in Fall, 2004 as she teaches throughout Spring 2004. Suzanne will develop a basic ANGEL course during the Spring 2004 semester in order to be familiar with some of the ways ANGEL can be used, specifically, the gradebook, in-touch function, and message board. As the semester continues, all handouts Suzanne distributes in her on campus class will also be uploaded to the ANGEL class. In this way, the students will have access to all handouts. It is anticipated that Suzanne, if asked to teach this or another course for Providence College either on campus or on-line, she will utilize the many functions of ANGEL.

Project Outcomes

Angel- or Course-Related: The courses Educational Measurement and The Child with Special Needs will be available on-line for students in the School of Continuing Education's Teacher Certification Program in Fall, 2004.

Enhancement to Instructional Practices: Suzanne Walker will learn how to use Angel to create an on-line course which will enhance her abilities to integrate Angel in the courses she teaches for the School of Continuing Education. Caig Rice will advance his use of Angel by developing a second course on-line, The Child with Special Needs.

Professional Conference Presentation: National Educational Computing Conference June, 2005

Assessment Plan

Learning will be enhanced by the student being actively involved in seeking information. In a traditional lecture course, students are receivers of information and a professor can recommend supplements that the student may need to go out of their way to locate. All supplementary materials will be hyperlinked within the Angel site, thus giving the student instant additional information while they are actively engaged in the learning process. Student learning will be evaluated by the use of on-line multiple choice, short answer quizzes, essays, and unit plans. Feedback from these assignments will be within four days of submission as the professor will check the site on a regular basis and the grades with comment will be inputted into the on-line grade book. Additional feedback regarding submitted assignments will also be provided to the students using the grade book function of Angel. The mentor uses the comment function of MSWord to provide detailed feedback to submitted work. The mentee will learn how to give electronic feedback as well. Providing feedback electronically provides a dialogue between the student and professor that enhances discourse. This correspondence has been more effective with assignments submitted on-line than papers passed in and passed back in class.

Teaching on-line will augment our pedagogy in the courses taught on campus as we will continue to learn how to utilize more functions of Angel. The purpose of this grant is not to eliminate these courses from being offered on campus but to provide options for School of Continuing Education students to take courses on-line. Using the Angel course management system for an on-line increases communication and productivity for faculty and students regardless if they are enrolled in an on-line or on campus course.

It will be apparent soon after the course begins if this is successful. Success will be measured two ways:

1) the number of emails from students requesting technical assistance; and

2) the students' grades from the on-line quizzes, written assignments, and discussion questions included in a message board for each chapter.

At the conclusion of the Fall semester, students will complete a course evaluation indicating the extent to which their learning was enhanced by taking this on-line course (Graham, Cagiltay, Lim, Craner, & Duffy, 2001). In addition to the results of this course evaluation, student feedback will be utilized to modify the course for the next time it is offered. The suggestions/recommendation obtained from the course evaluation for Educational Psychology will be included in the development of the on-line version of The Child with Special Needs. The suggestions/recommendations from Educational Measurement offered for the first time in the Fall will be considered for changes the next time this course is offered on-line.

In determining if this altered instructional procedure is more effective than those previously used, we can only imagine that it will be. Given a lecture-style class, students may not be inclined to participate in class or ask questions. Given the nature of an on-line class, the students interact primarily with the professor and therefore is allowed the time to develop their thoughts and questions before initiating electronic contact with the professor. If a student is not engaging in the on-line activities, the professor will contact the student to determine the root of the problem before the student gets too far behind. Using technology also provides a record of communication between students and professors. Using the Message Board in Angel as well as the In Touch function provides detailed documentation of electronic communications. Teaching an on campus course, detailing face-to-face interactions and communications are more difficult to track than if only electronic communication occur.

We are excited to have pre-service teachers learn on-line so that they can take the ideas and technological skills gained from these classes and include them in their own pedagogy. Given the nature of what teachers are being asked to do, the use of technology will enhance teacher productivity and student learning.

Having taught The Child with Special Needs on campus and Educational Psychology on-line, Craig knows that the way he teaches on-line is more effective than teaching on campus as there is more time to process student questions and the feedback is superior. When a student asks a question via In Touch, Craig copies the question as well as his well thought out response to all students. This keeps confidential the student who asked the original question, eliminates multiple replies to the same question from other students and demonstrates to all students that the professor is available to them. All of these skills will be shared with Suzanne as she teaches Educational Measurement on-line. Craig will be enrolled in Suzanne's on-line class to monitor and provide feedback to her in teaching on-line for the first time.

In discussing this grant with the Administration of the School of Continuing Education, it was conceived that if this grant is successful, both Craig and Suzanne could mentor other faculty in SCE to either offer their course(s) on-line or to at least use Angel more effectively with the students they serve.