CREATING A DYNAMIC FACULTY-STUDENT FEEDBACK LOOP WITH SYNCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS ASSESSMENT TECHNOLOGIES IN A LARGE ENROLLMENT INTRODUCTORY GEOLOGY CLASS

It is challenging for faculty of large introductory courses to assess student understanding of core concepts at any given time in the semester. In attempt to solve this problem, UVM is restructuring its Introduction to Geology (enrolling 200 students and taught in a lab/lecture format) to take advantage of available commercial instructional technology that operates at different "times." The first, WebCT, is a web-based software that helps faculty organize course material and make it available to students at their convenience, in other words, not in "real time." The second, CPS, is a commercial hardware/software that enables faculty to obtain instantaneous feedback from students during class, or in "real time" using one instructor computer and student hand-held remote control-like devices. Thus we have restructured the course to use both synchronous (CPS) and asynchronous (WebCT) tools to create a dynamic feedback loop between the faculty and students -- providing the faculty member with detailed information about what course content students have mastered and what content needs further explanation and discussion. The feedback loop works as follows. After attending class, students are required to use the Quiz tool in WebCT to take an online quiz which tests their understanding of material presented earlier. Students have 24 hours in which to complete the quiz before the instructor evaluates student quiz results and uses this information to construct the CPS questions for the upcoming class. The instructor can gauge the success of this review with another “real time” CPS quiz. The CPS format provides instantaneous feedback to both the instructor and students and provides the instructor with the flexibility to adapt the ongoing class to specifically address student needs. Another component of the course restructure is to use WebCT to distribute pre-lab videos and post-lab video reviews of labs. We anticipate that this will have a major impact on student preparedness and integration of lab material into the lecture. Assessment of the class will hope to document not only improved student understanding of geoscience but also changing attitudes towards technology as a vehicle for enhancing learning.