Faculty Advisors Share Their Course Redesign Stories with Tips for Tracking Data

This fall, two more Are Your Students Learning? Webex sessions were completed in mathematics. This series combines information on data collection with personal stories from Faculty Advisors already tracking their student success data. Next semester, these sessions will be open to all faculty. Dates are coming soon for sessions so make sure to check back frequently for updates to our 2012 event calendar.

We’ve collected all the recordings from the entire series of webex sessions and posted them online in one central location. Please share this link with other faculty who are interested in learning about tracking student data.

Continuing in the trend that has brought these sessions success, each webex session in the Are Your Students Learning series starts with a presentation by Claire Masson, Program Manager for Efficacy Research at Pearson. Masson covers the flow of conducting an efficacy study by tracing the path and process of collecting data from setting the goal of the study or quantifying it to analyzing and interpreting the data. She shares templates to make data tracking and collection easier and reminds faculty of the statisticians Pearson has on staff to help analyze data. Masson makes sure to stress Pearson’s goal of providing faculty who are tracking their data with “actionable information” to make their teaching lead to the best results. Masson also shares a checklist to get faculty started with tracking and collecting data:

1. Pose Educational Question
2. Implementation of Study
3. Use Assessment Tools to Collect Data
4. Evaluate Data
5. Generate Final Report of Results

This fall personal experiences collecting data were shared by two mathematics Faculty Advisors: Kim Walters from Mississippi State University and Sharon Jackson from Brookhaven College. Walters began redesigning at Mississippi State University with College Algebra because students just weren’t taking or staying in the course. Before incorporating MyMathLab, the course was taught in a traditional format with the success rate of 61%. After implementation of the redesign, the course transformed into a hybrid format with coordinated coursework being taught among all sections. The current success rate is 77.1%. In addition to an increased average success rate, Walters has created a virtually paperless course that can be taught in large sections with manageable assessment and an easy-to-use gradebook. It’s now easier for graduate students without prior teaching experience to come in and teach the course and students are now able to get immediate feedback on their work.

Another positive change was the average withdraw rate dropping by almost 12% since the redesigned course started being taught in the fall of 2005. But Walters also had to show how the redesigned College Algebra course aided in student success in subsequent courses. Walters says that actual grades can’t tell an “accurate tale” since other factors contribute to how well a student does in class like course format, etc, but before MyMathLab students weren’t making it through College Algebra to get to those future courses and now they are.

Jackson implemented their course redesign at Brookhaven College in the spring of 2010 with multiple math courses taught in both traditional and online formats. Jackson decided to use MyLabsPlus to ensure students were registered. Quizzes, homework, and the final exam were all standardized across the board in MyMathLab. Tests are instructor-created. The biggest change for students moving into the redesign was that homework became required. Because students had to get used to doing homework again, pass rates didn’t initially improve overall, but for those students who completed their homework from the start, success rates did improve. Overall, regardless of grades, withdraw rates in the redesigned courses decreased.

A big priority prior to implementation of the course redesign was getting faculty prepared. Jackson made sure training continued on as a major component for faculty of the redesign and follow-up sessions that focus on specific aspects of MyMathLab are still offered to faculty teaching the redesigned course(s).

View all the recordings from the entire 2011 series of webex sessions for Are Your Students Learning online in one central location.