AN INCREMENTAL APPROACH TO IMPROVING ONLINE INSTRUCTION USING STUDENT FEEDBACK FROM A METACOGNITIVE QUIZZING TOOL

Formative assessments—those that occur concurrently with a particular part of the curriculum, rather than upon its conclusion—provide numerous benefits for both students and faculty. Since many formative assessments are conducted in real time in the classroom, acquiring formative assessment data from students is challenging in asynchronous online courses. CLASS 2.0 (Confidence-based Learning Accuracy Support System) is an online quiz tool that measures student performance on course learning objectives, confidence in their performance before taking the quiz (prediction), and confidence after completing the quiz (postdiction), which subsequently produce calibration (difference between student confidence and actual performance) and bias (underconfidence vs. overconfidence) values. Since CLASS 2.0 generates mean performance, prediction, postdiction, calibration, and bias values, instructors can quickly determine which course learning objectives were not mastered and identify common misconceptions based on student responses. Using this feedback, slight modifications can be made to the asynchronous online course content to address these learning gaps. This presentation will provide examples of small curricular changes that were informed by CLASS 2.0 data in Introduction to Oceanography, an online, asynchronous course at a large HSI and AANAPISI 2-year college (2YC) in Los Angeles County. From fall 2022-summer 2023, students in 7 sections of Introduction to Oceanography completed CLASS 2.0 quizzes on marine provinces, marine sediments, waves, tides, the rocky intertidal zone, coastal features, plate tectonics, seawater properties, primary productivity, and atmosphere-ocean interaction. Students also submitted metacognition surveys and brief oceanography concept quizzes at the beginning and end of the term. In addition to discussing the curricular modifications to the course that were made as a result of monitoring student performance on CLASS 2.0 quizzes, we will summarize the performance, calibration, and bias data from these sections of Introduction to Oceanography. CLASS 2.0 provides near real-time formative assessment data for faculty teaching asynchronous, online courses and creates opportunities for incremental, data-driven, timely modifications to the curriculum.