The software students used on the web pages was written by a professor at Michigan State University, Dr. Gerd Kortemeyer. His presentation is based on creating a separate web browser that operates within whatever browser a student is using. It is titled "Lecture OnLine". Students call up the proper internet address and log in. From that point, everything seen is part of the teacher's plans.
Dr. Kortemeyer allowed me to set up my own class within Lecture OnLine. Students initially see a list of chapters for their class. Once they select a chapter, they can select any page to view within that chapter. Chapters can contain many elements; notes to read, problems to solve, or other media like movies, video, or applets.
The online problems could be in different formats. One is the email feedback. For email feedback questions, the teacher writes a typical question and the student formulates their response and clicks a button to send it to the teacher. Another type is the multiple choice question. The teacher makes a list of several options for the student to choose from and each student sees a few of these options. One of those presented is correct and the rest are incorrect. Each student sees a different selection of options. A third type of question is the true/false question. The format is similar to the multiple choice questions except that all of the presented options must be answered correctly to get the problem right. Another type of problem is the image map problem. Students are asked a question, ane told to click on part of an image. For example, if I present a distance/time graph and tell the student to click the section where the object is moving most slowly, the student will not get credit until they choose the flattest part of the line. Finally, there are numerical response questions. This is the type I used most heavily. I wrote a question and gave the software the proper formula for solving the problem. Then, each student is presented with the question, but every student has different variables within their question.
When students input incorrect responses, a hint may appear if the teacher decided to make on for that particular problem. The hint may include a formula or links to sites where the necessary knowledge may be found. hints may also be attuned to the answer that is input... if a student forgets a negative sign, then the hint can be adjusted to remind the student that the sign of their answer is important. Sometimes, questions prove to be too difficult or too easy. Making the hint, then, is also difficult because the teacher can't anticipate every problem every student will run into.1
Several students elected to send me feedback regarding specific problems.
Here
are all of the feedbacks I got for the four week study.
Using email is a viable option for the online students. Near
the top of the screen is a button which when clicked, produces a feedback
screen. The student can ask the teacher a question, make a comment,
or respond to a question using this tool. The teacher response may
not be instant, but the two way communication makes email flexible enough
to be useful.2
To login to my class, follow these directions:
Click his link to lecture.lite.msu.edu
for username: demo
for password: demo
for class: brs