Professor, Geosciences
Associate Dean, Natural Sciences and Mathematics
Physical Geology - GEOL 1330
Section | Topic | |
---|---|---|
1 | Teaching Philosophy | |
2 | Course Description | |
3 | Curriculum Vitae | |
4 | Evaluations | |
5 | Grade Distributions | |
6 | Other Activities |
Teaching Philosophy as Exemplified by an OnLine/Distributed Section of
My first attempt at creating Internet resources was essentially a "digitization" of what I had done in class for some number of years. This added little, if anything, to the course.
With a new distribution mechanism - the Internet - I had an opportunity to think about why I included a particular image or series of images. Why, for example, had I used the same homework exercise for more than 20 years? I finally asked myself what I wanted my students to be able to do after they took the course and how could the Internet help me accomplish my goals.
Without knowing the term, I discovered that I was a closet constructivist. The Internet is a great way to disseminate information but knowledge is created by an interaction between and among the learners, the instructor/guide and the information.
I want my students to become aware of the Earth, its history and the processes that operate in and on it. I want them to be wise citizens, capable of understanding the scientific method and its limitations. I want them to become good decision makers and I want them to develop a feeling for how scientists work.
I believe that trying to take advantage of the interactive, distributed nature of the Internet has helped me to create a course that now comes closer to my ideal.
Evolution of GEOL 1330
In 1995 Internet resources were developed for the physical geology course (GEOL 1330) that I have been teaching since 1968 at the University of Houston. What began as a mechanism for distributing the course reading list, the weekly homework assignments, some rudimentary course notes and a few links to geosciences resources (shovelware) has grown over time. The notes have been expanded, a "common look and feel" has been developed, and all of the in-class power point presentations (with some streaming audio commentary) can be viewed from the student's browser. Each chapter ends with at least 50 interactive practice quiz questions.
Homework exercises were designed to engage the student through a combination of interactive, Internet-based resources, data gathering, synthesis and interpretation and two short role playing writing exercises (exercises IA and IB).
The power point presentations with streaming audio commentary are password protected -- enter physical for the name and rocks for the password (Power Point). You will need Real Player to hear the audio.
Distributed GEOL 1330
In the spring semester of 2000 I agreed to offer physical geology in an online environment. I was curious as to what it would be like to "teach" a course with a minimum of face to face contact. I found that the students were motivated by the presumed convenience of not having to come to the campus for another course. Overall, I thought that the experiment was successful.
In the fall semester of 2000 I agreed to offer both a face-to-face section (the Honors section that I have offered since 1985) and an online section. Both the face to face and online sections had access to identical resources. The only difference was in the dates of examinations, when assignments were due, and the format for the quizzes. Face to face students knew that there would be about 10 "surprise" quizzes spread over the semester. Online students took one quiz per week. The online section is being offered for a third time during the spring semester 2001.
This is a freshman course and UH does not offer lower-level undergraduate courses as part of its Distance Education program. Thus, this is not a Distance Education course but a course for University of Houston students that is distributed via the Internet. With the exception of a 1.5 hour introductory lecture and 4 examinations (all held on campus) the content was delivered electronically.
Based on the experiences of other UH faculty who have offered Internet-distributed courses, online physical geology was set up so that I enrolled the students. I wanted to teach physical geology and not a course about using computers. The registration manual included a note for the section that students should send an e-mail message to jbutler@uh.edu requesting additional information. Students who tried to enroll via VIP were told that they needed the permission of the instructor. Students who inquired were sent an attachment that asked them to describe their computing equipment, to listen to an audio clip, and to look at the course home page. Their answers, including enough information so that I would know they could hear the audio file, were to be returned to me as an attachment.
For each online class offering, nearly 90 students expressed interest and were sent an attachment. Approximately 35% returned the attachment and were enrolled in the course; about 10% of those enrolled initiated a drop by the 12th class day. This semester, for example, a total of 32 students were enrolled on the 12th class day out of 93 requests received.
This registration procedure took very little effort to manage and the return on a small investment of time proved worthwhile. The process convinced me that the students possessed the minimal computing equipment and expertise that I felt was needed -- before the course actually started and not a week or more into the semester. Students took the opportunity to ask about prerequisites and course content. A rapport with the class was initiated that seemed to sustain itself throughout the semester.
Students were subscribed to a listserv and the first messages were sent about a week before the start of the semester. I explained why I was offering an online course and the students were asked to discuss why they were taking one. The archives of the listserv are public.
The first class meeting was held on campus on the Saturday before the start of the semester. By that time I knew more about the students than I would have by the end of the semester for a face to face class. As noted in the syllabus, the exams were held on campus three times during the semester. During the spring semester of 2000 I decided to follow the exam with an hour lecture that introduced the next section of the course. This proved to have been the most unpopular thing I have done in more than 35 years of teaching. The students argued that they were capable of reading on their own and did not feel the need for an introductory lecture. From then on, students were free to leave once they had finished the exam. I was available for any questions following the examination.
An answer sheet was posted by noon of the examination day (Examination 1). Brief explanations as to why a particular response was correct are posted along with the distribution of scores in the class. This proved to have been a good practice. Students received nearly instant feedback (they were allowed to take the exam with them as their answers were recorded on a scantron sheet). The brief explanations seem to satisfy them as to why their answer was not the best.
I use Excel as a gradebook and the "save as html" feature creates a file that is available from the syllabus and from the footer at the end of each chapter. This online gradebook allows students to make sure that I have evaluated their work and recorded it in a timely fashion and to get an idea as to how they are doing with respect to the rest of the class.
Each week a message is sent to the listserv. These quickly became known as "Dr. Butler's nagging memos". I briefly reviewed the material they would be working on during the coming week and, for the online sections, distributed the weekly quiz (see Week 1). Quizzes were due within a week and students were given the opportunity to improve their answers as long as the final response was submitted within a week. The quizzes gave me an opportunity to function as a Virtual Tutor. This is an experience I find has become almost extinct with a face to face section. I estimate that less than 2% of my posted office hours have been occupied by discussions with students taking lower level courses during my 33 years at UH.
Assessment is an ongoing process in these courses. The students throughout the semester submit four "surveys". The surveys are more fully described in section 6.
This semester I added a "discussion component " to the online class. A topic is posted at the beginning of the month and students are expected to post at least two responses for each of the three topics. My goal is to engage the students in expressing their opinions on academic and geology topics. So far, the experiment seems to be working. (The committee can follow the first discussion by opening the February Directory at the archives page.)
With the exception of some of the cgi scripts, I have done all of the html scripting and image processing. This has proven to be a rewarding experience. The process of designing the web resources forced me to really think about what I want the learners to be able to do. Subsequent face to face sections have been enhanced as a result of the course redesign process that was necessary to present the material online. The primary benefactor of these efforts has been me but I believe there have been spin-off benefits to the students as well.
A series of four surveys are an integral part of the evaluation process used in all of sections of GEOL 1330 that I teach (face to face as well as online). The surveys are spread throughout the course and are web-distributed cgi forms. Submissions are returned to me in the form of tab-delimited text that can be put into a database for storage and further analysis.
These surveys were submitted to the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects as I am interested in using the information that has been received in talks and publications. Approval was obtained in 1999 and an agreed upon statement accompanies each survey.
Survey 1 is essentially a pre-test in which I have tried to get a sense of what students are bringing to the course in the way of Earth literacy. The average score for the fall semester 2000 face to face class was a 9.5 as compared with a 10.1 for the online class offered in the same semester. The difference is not significant at the 95% confidence level. I use the responses to see if there are topics that need to be addressed more thoroughly.
Survey 2 is distributed about a month into the semester. In this survey the focus is on the student's attitudes towards education in general. A summary of responses to specific questions follows.
Survey 3 is distributed about 8 to 9 weeks into the semester. The focus is on the course in physical geology in particular and students are asked to evaluate the usefulness of the various components/resources that are available.
Survey 4 is distributed when there are about 2 weeks remaining in the semester. This survey is similar to the survey that Geosciences has used in its face to face sections for the past decade. My face to face section received the "standard" form rather than the one shown here as this one has an online flavor.
All of the data for the three online sections and the past 5 years of face to face sections are stored in a database and some of these data have been used in talks (and accompanying abstracts) and journal articles (see my curriculum vitae).
Another set of evaluations is that of Comments From Former Students. All students seeking permission to enroll are asked to read through these comments prior to making a decision as to whether to seek enrollment. I found the comments to be quite revealing and basically honest and offer them as another form of course evaluation.
I hesitate to reproduce raw data and am also reluctant to engage in an in depth data analysis. Therefore, I have selected a few of the questions and present responses for the online and face to face sections taught in the fall semester, 2000.
As noted in the following section, students in the two previous online versions of the course have performed (class gpa) higher than any of my previous face to face section in the past decade. A summary of my findings is deferred to the following section.
The following questions were asked about four weeks into the semester as part of survey 2.
Some Kind of B (B+, B, or B-) was the response of 68% of the face-to-face class and 70% of the online class. Most of my colleagues continue to hold that a C is an average grade. About two-thirds of my student's hold that a B is now an average grade.
Question 2: Most faculty believe that you should study at least 3 hours per week for each hour you spend in class. Realistically, how much time (on average) do you spend per week studying for a 3-hour course?
Response | Face-to-Face | Online |
---|---|---|
1 -- 2 hours per week | 47% | 50% |
2 -- 3 hours per week | 28% | 31% |
3 -- 6 hours per week | 18% | 14% |
Hardly any time at all | 7% | 5% |
Question 3: "Because students have a basic right to succeed, achievement should not be made difficult at college"
Response | Face-to-Face | Online |
---|---|---|
Strongly Agree | 12% | 14% |
Agree | 33% | 16% |
Disagree | 45% | 55% |
Strongly Disagree | 10% | 15% |
About half of the face-to-face students agreed that achievement should not be made difficult as compared with about 30% of the online students. More work needs to be done to determine if this is a significantly different response.
Question 4: "I'm the consumer who pays the bills, and so my instructor should be mostly responsible for making sure that I learn and receive my money†s worth
Response | Face-to-Face | Online | |
---|---|---|---|
Strongly Agree | 20% | 31% | |
Agree | 30% | 31% | |
Disagree | 45% | 33% | |
Strongly Disagree | 5% | 5% |
Students were asked if the use of the Internet enhanced the course and 92% of each section agreed that it did.
Response to the question "would you recommend this course to a friend": 100% of the online students agreed or strongly agreed (about 50:50) as compared with 84% agreement from the face to face students.
Response to the question "would you recommend this instructor to a friend": 100% of the online students agreed or strongly agreed (about 40:60) as compared with 90% agreement from the face to face students.
Response to the question "will your grade (the question was asked in the 4th survey) clearly reflect what you have learned in the course: 85% of the online students agreed or strongly agreed (about 50:50) as compared with 80% agreement from the face to face students.
Overall, as an instructor, I am quite pleased with the responses. My evaluations in the department have consistently exceeded the average and median responses for all sections of this course and are more or less consistent with those noted above.
I believe that we err when evaluations are done in class at the end of a semester. I think that there is merit in distributing the surveys throughout the semester, in giving students time to think about their responses and in addressing attitudinal issues of a general nature. As noted in the course pages, students received "points" for submitting the surveys and this may seem inappropriate to some. The total points for all 4 surveys was about 5% of the total number of points available and more than 90% of the students in both sections responded. Thus, the extra was nearly equivalent to adding a constant which shifts the mean but not the spread of the distribution. PIN numbers were removed from the responses before they were input into a database for analysis.
More information on assessment is available should the review committee request it.
A summary of the grade distribution(s) (including average grade and number of Ws, As, A-s, B+s, etc.) for the class under consideration.
Letter Grade (%) | Online Spring 2000 | Online Fall 2000 | Face to Face Fall 2000 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
A | 28% | 18% | 9% | |
B | 29% | 33% | 26% | |
C | 35% | 45% | 28% | |
D | 0% | 2% | 12% | |
F | 3% | 0% | 19% | |
W | 0% | 2% | 7% | |
Drop | (2) | (3) | (6) | |
Section gpa | 2.9 | 2.7 | 2.0 |
I have taught 9 sections of face-to-face physical geology in the past decade. This has been an honors section with an average enrollment of about 52 per semester. Approximately 10% of the students have been in the honors program. The class grade point average ranges between 1.9 and 2.3.
In essence, the lower third of the distribution in the face to face section was missing in the online class. There were some differences between the two comparison groups of students. Notably, about 75% of the online class were juniors and seniors as compared with about 40% in the face-to-face class. On the other hand the demographics (age, gender, and ethnicity) of both groups are nearly identical and reasonably close to those of the UH undergraduate student body. The amount of off-campus employment was about the same for both sections.
The no significant difference phenomena home page provides links to 355 research reports, summaries and papers (from 1928 through 2000) that have addressed issues involving the use of technology in distance education. Almost all of these studies have asked whether the nature of the distribution mechanism (tapes, interactive television, the Internet, etc.) made a significant difference as evaluated by variations in some measure of learning. The definition of learning varies from study to study. In some cases the end of term final examination scores were used to measure learning whereas in others the measure was restricted to a particular part or section of a course. In general, these 355 studies found that students who were delivered content in some non face-to-face fashion did at least as well as those who enrolled in a traditional class taught in a traditional classroom by a traditional instructor.
Scores on all three examinations (the final is optional) and on total points are significantly different (higher) for the Online fall 2000 and face to face fall 2000 course at the 95% confidence level (alpha = 0.05). Thus I might argue that rejection of the null leads to to a situation in which students in the online course "learned more" and that distribution mechanism was the difference.
The students self-selected the section they enrolled in. They were not randomly assigned to one or the other. I think it would be unwise to set up an experiment in which lower level students were randomly assigned to courses offered by different distribution mechanisms. Although this might make it easier to interpret the statistics, I don't think that my average face to face undergraduate would fare well in a distributed environment.
In both sections of the online course Seniors and Juniors accounted for about 70% of the students enrolled. More than two-thirds of these seniors and juniors had taken at least 1 distance course prior to enrolling in physical geology. In the face to face sections, seniors and juniors usually account for about 30% of the class and about 90% of the face to face students have not taken an online class and about 67% are not particularly interested in taking an online course.
I believe that the higher performance exhibited by the online sections is more a function of the prior academic experiences of the students rather than the different distribution mechanisms. A comparison of a face-to-face section and an online section taught in the fall semester of 2000 is the topic of a paper submitted for publication in the Journal of Geoscience Education (in review).
The course pages are constantly evolving. With minimal equipment (a computer, a digital camera and a scanner) I can come across something at 10 in the morning and have it posted by 10:05.
As noted previously, my teaching, service, and research interests are (to me) indistinguishable. This works fine for me even though many of my colleagues write this off as an onset of senility. I remind them that you don't have to be old to be senile; it may help but it is not a prerequisite. I believe that universities are changing and the expectations that others have of us are changing. What seems to be changing more slowly are our expectations of and for ourselves.
About five years ago I created the The Virtual Geosciences Professor, a page designed to provide access to how other faculty are using the Internet in their courses. The pages (a great time sink) now contain nearly 4,500 references to resources. The information is stored in a File Maker Pro Database with full text searching capabilities. This site will be featured in one of the February issues of Science.
Through the UH Moles (an ad hoc group of faculty with an interest in technology) and UH-Camel (a listserv focusing on creating learning environments) I have tried to encourage faculty to consider whether technology would help them create an environment in which learning can take place. It remains to be seen if technology aids learning. I believe that it does but can I prove it? Not yet.
In my spring 2001 section of online physical geology I have divided the class of 32 into two groups of 16 each. Students were randomly assigned to group 1 (no special treatment) or group 2 (some special treatment). I believe that many of my students learn best when they have the opportunity to interact with information and that animations and simulations delivered via the web provide a means of achieving that goal. Two quizzes have been designed -- one on evolution of meandering rivers and one on gravity anomalies. Group 1 will be referred to existing class notes and then linked to the quiz. Group 2 will be referred to the class notes and to one or more interactive components prior to taking the same quiz. One quiz has been given in which there was no special treatment and there was no significant difference between the means of the two sets of quiz scores.
Two of my geoscience colleagues (Bill Dupre and Ian Evans) and I received a small grant from the Environmental Institute of the University of Houston to develop Internet resources that convey environmental learning experiences to the general public (including, of course, college students). We have developed a set of exercises dealing with problems faced by residents of Simonton, Texas. Another exercise deals with the question of rising and falling sea levels and their impact on the economic development of the Texas coastal zone near Freeport, Texas. These exercises are rough drafts and both will continue to evolve with the additions of streaming audio and video. Eventually they will become components in both my online and face to face sections of physical geology.
At least one more interactive exercise is planned that focuses on the effects of "cementing a bayou"; in particular, Braes Bayou.
We believe a "local" component" is an essential ingredient for students in our courses. Many of our students come from the Houston Metropolitan area and many have not traveled outside of the local environment. Illustrations drawn from the local area provide a helpful perspective.