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Main Menu Session 3568

Technology-based Innovative Teaching Methods

Helen Kuznetsov University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract Innovative ideas on efficient teaching has been developed and tested in class as a result of more than 15 years of experimentation with courseware development and implementation using a variety of hardware, software, application programs and methods of delivery, including Web-based teaching and testing. The best learning results were observed when students had to solve program-generated realistic problems right after the lecture using step-by-step method. The program provided judgment, feedback and help after each step. Correct answer was given after three wrong ones allowing students to proceed with the problem. Students were allowed to repeat the work because the program generated a new problem each time. The final solution was always correct but the score was reduced at each step by the points lost at each wrong answer. The paper describes how these ideas can be implemented using a variety of available authoring software. Student evaluation of these methods of teaching will be presented.

I. Introduction The author started developing courseware in Statics and Mechanics of Materials in 1982. At that time she was working at Computer-Education Research Laboratory (CERL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and teaching in the School of Architecture at UIUC. The first mainframe based computer education system PLATO was developed at CERL. The system underwent many transformations as the communication technology was improving and it exists now as a private enterprise named "NovaNET". The NovaNET programs are available and were used in author's classes whenever UIUC agreed to pay for NovaNET services.

All the features of NovaNET and more were incorporated in cT authoring environment developed at Carnegie-Mellon University. The author developed a package of 10 Statics lessons using cT 3.0. This development was partially sponsored by a grant from NSF 1,2,3 . All Statics lessons are continuously used in teaching Statics in the School of Architecture at UIUC. Upon evaluation of the lessons' effectiveness they were significantly improved. The package is available on a Zip disk or CD from CompuCollege (helenk@uiuc.edu).

The Web-based interactive homework assignments and quizzes were developed using Mallard http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/Mallard/ As of today there are 17 Mallard lessons in Statics and 14 lessons in Mechanics of Materials. The author and other instructors teaching these subjects in the School of Architecture use all the Mallard lessons.

II. Innovative Features of Teaching and Testing Courseware The cT lessons can incorporate the best teaching features described in the abstract. These lessons are used as homework assignments. Necessity to solve problems stimulates students' questions related to the subject matter. The Help sequences and Feedback remarks at the wrong answers provide an easy access to the ways to find the correct answers by learning the appropriate theory and by following certain procedures. This approach is opposite to what is usually done by lecturing when we answer questions generated in the process of the lecture. These are not students' questions and they are not interested in our answers to the degree necessary for the effort to understand the answers.

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ã 2002, American Society for Engineering Education Main Menu

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Kuznetsov, H. (2002, June), Technology Based Innovative Teaching Methods Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10661